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A  Volunteer  Poilu 


By 
Henry  Sheahan 


Boston  and  New  York 

Houghton  Mifflin  Company 

The  Riverside  Press  Cambridge 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,    I916,    BV    THE    ATLANTIC    MONTHLY    COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,    1916,    BY    HENRY    SHEAHAN 


ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Published  October  iqib 


D 

15 


46V 


TO 

PROFESSOR  CHARLES  TOWNSEND  COPELAND 

or   HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


Dear  Copey, 

At  Verdun  I  thought  of  you,  and  the  friendly- 
hearth  of  HoUis  15  seemed  very  far  away  from  the 
deserted,  snow-swept  streets  of  the  tragic  city.  Then 
suddenly  I  remembered  how  you  had  encouraged  me 
and  many  others  to  go  over  and  help  in  any  way  that 
we  could;  I  remembered  your  keen  understanding  of 
the  Epic,  and  the  deep  sympathy  with  human  beings 
which  you  taught  those  whose  privilege  it  was  to 
be  your  pupils.  And  so  you  did  not  seem  so  far  away 
after  all,  but  closer  to  the  heart  of  the  war  than  any 
other  friend  I  had. 

I  dedicate  this  book  to  you  with  grateful  affec- 
tion after  many  years  of  friendship. 

Henry 
topsfield, 
September,  19 16 


Preface 

I  HAVE  ventured  to  call  this  book  A  Volunteer 
Poilu  principally  because  we  were  known  to  the 
soldiers  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre  as  "  les  Poilus  Ameri- 
cains."  Then,  too,  it  was  my  ambition  to  do  for 
my  comrades,  the  French  private  soldiers,  what 
other  books  have  done  for  the  soldiers  of  other 
armies.  The  title  chosen,  however,  was  more 
than  complimentary;  it  was  but  just.  In  recog- 
nition of  the  work  of  the  Section  during  the  sum- 
mer, it  was,  in  October,  19 15,  formally  adopted 
into  the  French  army;  a  French  officer  became  its 
administrative  head,  and  the  drivers  were  given 
the  same  papers,  pay,  and  discipline  as  their 
French  comrades. 

I  wish  to  thank  many  of  my  old  friends  of 
Section  II,  who  have  aided  me  in  the  writing 
of  this  book. 

Henry  Sheahan 


Contents 

I.  The  Rochambeau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre      i 
A  war-time  voyage  —  The  Rochambeau 

—  Loading  ammunition  and  food  supplies 

—  Personalities  on  board  —  The  dyestufifs 
agent  —  The  machine  lathes  man  —  The 
Swede  from  Minnesota  who  was  on  his  way 
to  the  Foreign  Legion  —  His  subsequent 
history  —  The  talk  aboard  —  The  French 
officer  —  His  philosophy  of  war  —  Ernest 
Psichari  —  Arrival  at  Bordeaux  —  The 
Arabs  at  the  docks  —  The  convalescent  sol- 
diers —  Across  La  Beauce  —  The  French 
coimtryside  in  war-time. 

II.  An  Unknown  Paris  in  the  Night  and 

Rain 26 

Paris,  rain,  and  darkness  —  The  Gardens 
of  the  Tuileries  —  The  dormitory  —  The 
hospital  at  night  —  Beginning  of  the  Cham- 
pagne offensive  —  The  Gare  de  la  Chapelle 
at  two  in  the  morning  —  The  wounded  — 
The  Zouave  stretcher-bearers  —  The  Arabs 
in  the  abandoned  school  —  Suburban  Paris 
at  dawn  —  The  home  of  the  deaconesses. 

III.  The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines  49 

Nancy  —  The  porter's  story  —  Getting 
to  the  front  —  What  the  phrase  "  the  front " 
really  means  —  The  sense  of  the  front  — 
The  shell  zone  —  The  zone  of  quiet  —  My 
quarters  in  the  shelled  house  —  The  fire 
shells  —  Bombarded  at  night  —  Death  of 
the  soldier  fireman. 

ix 


Co7itents 

IV.  La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre  .      .      .75 
LeBois-le-Pretre — Description — History 

—  Les  Glycines,  "Wisteria  Villa"  —  The 
Road  to  the  trenches  —  At  the  trenches  — 
The  painter's  idea  of  "le  sinistra  dans  I'art" 

—  The  sign  post  —  The  zone  of  violence  — 
The  Quart-en-Reserve  —  The  village  caught 
in  the  torment  of  the  lines  —  The  dead  on 
the  barbed  wire  —  "  The  Road  to  Metz." 

V.  The   Trenches    in    the    "Wood    of 

Death." 100 

The  Trenches  —  Organization  —  Nature 
of  the  war  —  Food,  shelters,  clothing,  am- 
munition, etc.  —  A  typical  day  in  the 
trenches  —  Trench  shells  or  "  crapouilots " 

—  In  the  abri  —  The  tunnel  —  The  doc- 
trinaire lieutenant  of  engineers. 

VI.  The  Germans  attack 124 

The  piano  at  Montauville  —  An  inter- 
rupted concert  —  At  the  Quart  —  The 
battle  for  the  ridge  of  the  Wood  —  Fall  of 
the  German  aeroplane  —  Psychology  of  the 
men  in  the  trenches  —  Religion  in  the 
trenches. 

VII.  The  Town  in  the  Trenches  .  .  .138 
Poor  old  "Pont"  —  Description  of  the 
town  —  A  civilian's  story  —  The  house  of 
the  Captain  of  the  Papal  Zouaves  —  Church 
of  St.  Laurent  —  The  Cemetery  and  its 
guardian. 

VIII.  Messieurs  les  Poilus  de  la  Grande 

Guerre         158 

En  rcpos  —  A  village  of  troops  —  Man- 
ners   and    morals  —  The    concert  —  The 


Contents 

journal    of    the    Bois-le-Pretre  —  Various 
poUus. 


IX.  Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun  .  i8o 
En  permission  —  State  of  France  —  The 
France  of  1905  and  the  France  of  1915  — 
The  class  of  19 17  —  Bar-le-Duc  —  The  air 
raid  —  Called  to  Verdun. 


X.  The  Great  Days  of  Verdun  .  .  194 
Verdun  in  191 2  —  Verdun  on  the  night 
of  the  first  great  attack  —  The  hospital  — 
The  shelled  cross  road  —  The  air  shell  — 
The  pastry  cook's  story  —  The  cullivateur 
of  the  Valois  and  the  crater  at  Douaumont 
—  The  pompiers  of  Verdun  —  "Do  you 
want  to  see  an  odd  sight?"  —  Verdun  in 
storm  and  desolation. 


Illustrations 

PONT-A-MOUSSON,  THE  MoSELLE,  AND  THE  BoiS- 

le-Pretre  before  the  War     .       .  Frontispiece 

Burlap  Screens  to  hide  the  Road  from  the 
Germans 62 

Carrying  down  the  Dead  after  the  Attack    62 

The  Quart-en-Re  serve 92 

Ready  for  Gas  —  A  Brazier  aot)  a  Bottle  of 
Gasolene 92 

"A  Package  for  Fritz" 116 

The  Road  to  Metz 148 

The  Debris  of  a  Fallen  German  Aeroplane  148 

The  Trench  Journal  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre 
(Front) 176 

The  Trench  Journal  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre 
(Reverse) 178 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   ROCHAMBEAU   S'eN   VA-T-EN    GUERRE 

Moored  alongside  a  great  two-storied  pier,  with 
her  bow  to  the  land,  the  cargo  and  passenger  boat, 
Rochambeau,  of  the  Compagnie  Generale  was 
being  loaded  with  American  supplies  for  the 
France  of  the  Great  War.  A  hot  August  sun 
struck  spots  and  ripples  of  glancing  radiance  from 
the  viscous,  oily  surface  of  the  foul  basin  in  which 
she  lay  inert;  the  air  was  full  of  sounds,  the  wheez- 
ing of  engines,  the  rattling  of  cog-checks,  and  the 
rumble  of  wheels  and  hoofs  which  swept,  in  sultry 
pufifs  of  noise  and  odor,  from  the  pavements  on 
the  land.  Falling  from  the  exhausts,  a  round,  sil- 
very-white cascade  poured  into  the  dark  lane  be- 
tween the  wharf  and  the  deck,  and  sounded  a 
monotonous,  roaring  underchord  to  the  inter- 
mingled dins.  At  the  sun-bathed  bow,  a  derrick 
gang  lowered  bags  of  flour  into  the  open  well  of 
the  hold;  there  were  commands  in  French,  a 
chugging,  and  a  hissing  of  steam,  and  a  giant's 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

clutch  of  dusty,  hundred-kilo  flour-bags  from 
Duluth  would  swing  from  the  wharf  to  the  Ro- 
chambeau,  sink,  and  disappear.  In  some  way  the 
unfamiliar  language,  and  the  sight  of  the  thick- 
set, French  sailor-men,  so  evidently  all  of  one 
race,  made  the  Rochambeau,  moored  in  the 
shadow  of  the  sky-scrapers,  seem  mysteriously 
alien.  But  among  the  workers  in  the  hold,  who 
could  be  seen  when  they  stood  on  the  floor  of  the 
open  hatchway,  was  a  young,  red-headed,  Ameri- 
can longshoreman  clad  in  the  trousers  part  of  a 
suit  of  brown-check  overalls;  sweat  and  grime 
had  befouled  his  rather  foolish,  freckled  face,  and 
every  time  that  a  bunch  of  flour-bags  tumbled  to 
the  floor  of  the  well,  he  would  cry  to  an  invisible 
somebody  —  "  More  dynamite,  Joe,  more  dyna- 
mite!" 

Walking  side  by  side,  like  ushers  in  a  wedding 
procession,  two  of  the  ship's  officers  made  in- 
terminable rounds  of  the  deck.  Now  and  then 
they  stopped  and  looked  over  the  rail  at  the  load- 
ing operations,  and  once  in  low  tones  they  dis- 
cussed the  day's  communique.  "Pas  grand'  chose" 
(not  much  of  anything),  said  he  whom  I  took  to 
be  the  elder,  a  bearded,  seafaring  kind  of  man. 
"  We  have  occupied  a  crater  in  the  Argonne,  and 

2 


The  Rochamheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

driven  back  a  German  patrol  (une  patrouille 
Boche)  in  the  region  of  Nomeny."  The  younger, 
blond,  pale,  with  a  wispy  yellow  mustache,  lis- 
tened casually,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  turbulence 
below.  The  derrick  gang  were  now  stowing  away 
clusters  of  great  wooden  boxes  marked  the  Some- 
thing Arms  Company.  "My  brother  says  that 
American  bullets  are  filled  with  powder  of  a  very 
good  quality  "  (d'une  tres  bonne  qualite),  remarked 
the  latter.  "By  the  way,  how  is  your  brother?" 
asked  the  bearded  man.  "Very  much  better," 
answered  the  other;  "the  last  fragment  (eclat) 
was  taken  out  of  his  thigh  just  before  we  left 
Bordeaux."  They  continued  their  walk,  and  three 
little  French  boys  wearing  English  sailor  hats  took 
their  places  at  the  rail. 

As  the  afternoon  advanced,  a  yellow  siunmer 
sun,  sinking  to  a  level  with  the  upper  fringes  of 
the  city  haze,  gave  a  signal  for  farewells;  and  little 
groups  retired  to  quieter  corners  for  good-byes. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  worrying  about  sub- 
marines; one  heard  fragments  of  conversations 
—  "They  never  trouble  the  Bordeaux  route"  — 
"Absolutely  safe,  je  t'assure";  and  in  the  accents 
of  Iowa  the  commanding  advice,  "Now,  don't 
worry!"  "Good-bye,  Jim!   Good-bye,  Maggie!" 

3 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

cried  a  rotund,  snappy  American  drummer,  and 
was  answered  with  cheery,  honest  wishes  for 
"  the  success  of  his  business."  Two  young  Ameri- 
cans with  the  same  identical  oddity  of  gait  walked 
to  and  fro,  and  a  little  black  Frenchman,  with  a 
frightful  star-shaped  scar  at  the  corner  of  his 
mouth,  paraded  lonelily.  A  middle-aged  French 
woman,  rouged  and  dyed  back  to  the  thirties, 
and  standing  in  a  nimbus  of  perfume,  wept  at  the 
going  of  a  younger  woman,  and  ruined  an  elabo- 
rate make-up  with  grotesque  traceries  of  tears. 
"Give  him  my  love,"  she  sobbed;  "tell  him  that 
the  business  is  doing  splendidly  and  that  he  is  not 
to  buy  any  of  Lafitte's  laces  next  time  he  goes  to 
Paris  en  permission."  A  little  later,  the  Rocham- 
beau,  with  slow  majesty,  backed  into  the  channel, 
and  turned  her  bow  to  the  east. 

The  chief  interest  of  the  great  majority  of  her 
passengers  was  commercial;  there  were  American 
drummers  keen  to  line  their  pockets  with  Euro- 
pean profits;  there  were  French  commis  voyageurs 
who  had  been  selling  articles  of  French  manu- 
facture which  had  formerly  been  made  by  the 
Germans;  there  were  half-ofiicial  persons  who 
had  been  on  missions  to  American  ammunition 
works;  and  there  was  a  diplomat  or  two.    From 

4 


The  Rochafnbeau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

the  sample  trunks  on  board  you  could  have  taken 
anything  from  a  pair  of  boots  to  a  time  fuse.  Al- 
together, an  interesting  lot.  Palandeau,  a  middle- 
aged  Frenchman  with  a  domed,  bald  forehead  like 
Socrates  or  Verlaine,  had  been  in  America  selling 
eau-de-cologne. 

"Then  you  are  getting  out  something  new?" 
I  asked. 

"Yes,  and  no,"  he  answered.  "Our  product  is 
the  old-fashioned  eau-de-cologne  water  with  the 
name  'Farina'  on  it." 

"But  in  America  we  associate  eau-de-cologne 
with  the  Germans,"  said  I.  "  Does  n't  the  bottle 
say  '  Johann  Maria  Farina'  ?  Surely  the  form  of 
the  name  is  German." 

"But  that  was  not  his  name,  monsieur;  he  was 
a  Frenchman,  and  called  himself  'Jean  Marie.' 
Yes,  really,  the  Germans  stole  the  manufacture 
from  the  French.  Consider  the  name  of  the  arti- 
cle, 'eau-de-cologne,'  is  not  that  French?" 

"Yes,"  I  admitted. 

"Alors,"  said  Palandeau;  "the  blocus  has  sim- 
ply given  us  the  power  to  reclaim  trade  oppor- 
tunities justly  ours.  Therefore  we  have  printed 
a  new  label  telling  the  truth  about  Farina,  and 
the  Boche  'Johann  Maria'  is  'kapout.'" 

S 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"Do  you  sell  much  of  it?" 

"Quantities!  Our  product  is  superior  to  the 
Boche  article,  and  has  the  glamour  of  an  importa- 
tion. I  await  the  contest  without  uneasiness." 

"What  contest?" 

"When  Jean  Marie  meets  Johann  Maria  — 
apres  la  guerre,"  said  Palandeau  with  a  twinkle 
in  his  eye. 

In  the  deck  chair  next  to  mine  sat  a  dark, 
powerfully  built  young  lowan  with  the  intensely 
masculine  head  of  a  mediaeval  soldier.  There  was 
a  bit  of  curl  to  the  dark-brown  hair  which  swept 
his  broad,  low  forehead,  his  brown  eyes  were  de- 
void of  fear  or  imagination,  his  jaw  was  set,  and 
the  big,  aggressive  head  rested  on  a  short,  mus- 
cular neck.  He  had  been  a  salesman  of  machine 
tools  till  the  "selling  end"  came  to  a  standstill. 

"  But  did  n't  the  munitions  traffic  boom  the 
machine-tool  industry?"  I  asked. 

"Sure  it  did.  You  ought  to  have  seen  what 
people  will  do  to  get  a  lathe.  You  know  about  all 
that  you  need  to  make  shells  is  a  machine  lathe. 
You  can't  get  a  lathe  in  America  for  love  or 
money  —  for  anything"  —  he  made  a  swift,  com- 
plete gesture  —  "all  making  shells.  There  is  n't 
a  junk  factory  in  America  that  has  n't  been  pawed 
6 


The  Rochamheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

over  by  guys  looking  for  lathes  —  and  my  God ! 
what  prices!  Knew  a  bird  named  Taylor  who  used 
to  make  water  pipes  in  Utica,  New  York  —  had  a 
stinking  little  lathe  he  paid  two  hundred  dollars 
for,  and  sold  it  last  year  for  two  thousand.  My 
firm  had  so  many  orders  for  months  ahead  that  it 
did  n't  pay  them  to  have  salesmen  —  so  they 
offered  us  jobs  inside;  but,  God,  I  can't  stand 
indoor  work,  so  I  thought  I  'd  come  over  here 
and  get  into  the  war.  I  used  to  be  in  the  State 
Cavalry.  You  ought  to  have  seen  how  sore  all 
those  Iowa  Germans  were  on  me  for  going,"  he 
laughed.  ''Had  a  hell  of  row  with  a  guy  named 
Schultz." 

Limping  slightly,  an  enormous,  grizzled  man 
approached  us  and  sat  down  by  the  side  of  the  ex- 
machinist.  Possibly  a  yellow-gray  suit,  cut  in  the 
bathrobe  American  style,  made  him  look  larger 
than  he  was,  and  though  heavily  built  and  stout, 
there  was  something  about  him  which  suggested 
ill  health.  One  might  have  thought  him  a  pros- 
perous American  business  man  on  his  way  to 
Baden-Baden.  He  had  a  big  nose,  big  mouth,  a 
hard  eye,  and  big,  freckled  hands  which  he  nerv- 
ously opened  and  closed. 

"See  that  feller  over  there?"  He  pointed  to  a 

7 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

spectacled  individual  who  seemed  lost  in  melan- 
choly speculation  at  the  rail  —  "  Says  he " s  a  Bel- 
gian lieutenant.  Been  over  here  trying  to  get 
cloth.  Says  he  can't  get  it,  the  firms  over  here 
have  n't  got  the  colors.  Just  think  of  it,  there 
is  n't  a  pound  of  Bernheim's  blue  in  the  whole 
country!" 

"I  thought  we  were  beginning  to  make  dyes  of 
our  own,"  said  the  lowan. 

"Oh,  yes,  but  we  have  n't  got  the  hang  of  it 
yet.  The  product  is  pretty  poor.  Most  of  the 
people  who  need  dyes  are  afraid  to  use  the  Amer- 
ican colors,  but  they  've  got  to  take  what  they 
can  get.  Friend  of  mine,  Lon  Seeger,  of  Seeger, 
Seeger  &  Hall,  the  carpet  people  in  Hackensack, 
had  twenty-five  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  mats 
spoiled  on  him  last  week  by  using  home  dyes." 

The  Belgian  lieutenant,  still  standing  by  the 
rail,  was  talking  with  another  passenger,  and  some 
fragments  of  the  conversation  drifted  to  our  ears. 
I  caught  the  words  —  "My  sister  —  quite  unex- 
pected —  barely  escaped  —  no  doubt  of  it  —  I 
myself  saw  near  Malines  —  perfectly  dreadful  — 
tout-a-fait  terrible." 

"Twenty-five  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  mats 
all  spoiled,  colors  ran,  did  n't  set,  no  good.  This 
8 


The  Rochamheau  s*en  va-t-en  Guerre 

war  is  raising  the  devil  with  the  United  States 
textiles.  Maybe  the  Germans  won't  get  a  glad 
hand  when  they  come  back.  We  hear  that  they  're 
going  to  flood  the  market  with  good,  low-priced 
dyes  so  as  to  bust  up  the  new  American  plants. 
Have  n't  you  heard  them  hollerin'  for  tariff  pro- 
tection? I  'm  going  over  to  look  up  a  new  green 
dye  the  French  are  getting  out.  We  hear  it's 
pretty  good  stuff.  What  are  you  boys  doing,  look- 
ing for  contracts?" 

The  lowan  replied  that  he  hoped  to  get  into  an 
English  cavalry  regiment,  and  I  mentioned  the 
corps  I  had  joined. 

"Well,  don't  get  killed,"  exclaimed  the  dye- 
stuffs  agent  paternally,  and  settled  down  in  his 
chair  for  a  nap. 

It  was  the  third  day  out;  the  ocean  was  still  the 
salty  green  color  of  the  American  waters,  and  big, 
oily,  unrippled  waves  were  rising  and  falling  un- 
der the  August  sun.  From  the  rail  I  saw  coming 
toward  us  over  the  edge  of  the  earth,  a  small 
tramp  steamer  marked  with  two  white  blotches 
which,  as  the  vessel  neared,  resolved  themselves 
into  painted  reproductions  of  the  Swedish  flag. 
Thus  passed  the  Thorvald,  carrying  a  mark  of 
the  war  across  the  lonely  seas. 

9 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"That's  a  Swedish  boat,"  said  a  voice  at  my 
elbow. 

"Yes,"  I  replied. 

A  boy  about  eighteen  or  nineteen,  with  a  fine, 
clear  complexion,  a  downy  face,  yellow  hair,  and 
blue  eyes,  was  standing  beside  me.  There  was 
something  psychologically  wrong  with  his  face;  it 
had  that  look  in  it  which  makes  you  want  to  see 
if  you  still  have  your  purse. 

"We  see  that  flag  pretty  often  out  in  Minne- 
sota," he  continued. 

"What's  your  name?"  I  asked. 

"Oscar  Petersen,"  he  answered. 

"Going  over  to  enlist?"  I  hazarded. 

"You  bet,"  he  replied  —  and  an  instant  later 
—  "Are  you?" 

I  told  him  of  my  intention.  Possibly  because 
we  were  in  for  the  same  kind  of  experience  he  later 
became  communicative.  He  had  run  away  from 
home  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  spent  his  sixteenth 
year  in  a  reform  school,  and  the  rest  of  his  time  as 
a  kind  of  gangster  in  Chicago.  I  can't  imagine  a 
more  useless  existence  than  the  one  he  revealed. 
At  length  he  "got  sick  of  the  crowd  and  got  the 
bug  to  go  to  war,"  as  he  expressed  it,  and  wrote  to 
his  poeple  to  tell  them  he  was  starting,  but  re- 

10 


The  Rochamheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

ceived  no  answer.  "My  father  was  a  Bible  cuss," 
he  remarked  cheerfully,  —  "never  got  over  my 
swiping  the  minister's  watch." 

A  Chicago  paper  had  printed  his  picture  and  a 
"story"  about  his  going  to  enlist  in  the  Foreign 
Legion  —  "popular  young  man  very  well  known 
in  the  — th  ward,"  said  the  article.  He  showed 
me,  too,  an  extraordinary  letter  he  had  received 
via  the  newspaper,  a  letter  written  in  pencil  on 
the  cheapest,  shabbiest  sheet  of  ruled  note-paper, 
and  enclosing  five  dollars.  "  I  hope  you  will  try  to 
avenge  the  Lusitania,"  it  said  among  other  things. 
The  letter  was  signed  by  a  woman. 

"Do  you  speak  French?"  I  asked. 

"Not  a  word,"  he  replied.  "I  want  to  be  put 
with  the  Americans  or  the  Swedes.  I  speak  good 
Swedish." 

Months  later,  on  furlough,  I  saw  in  a  hospital 
at  Lyons  a  college  classmate  who  had  served  in 
the  Foreign  Legion.  "Did  you  know  a  fellow 
named  Petersen?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,  I  knew  him,"  answered  my  friend;  "he 
lifted  a  fifty-franc  note  from  me  and  got  killed 
before  I  could  get  it  back." 

"How  did  it  happen?" 

"Went  through  my  pockets,  I  imagine." 
II 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"Oh,  no,  I  meant  how  did  he  get  killed?  " 

"Stray  shell  sailed  in  as  we  were  going  through 
a  village,  and  caught  him  and  two  of  the  other 
boys." 

"You  must  not  make  your  friend  talk  too 
much,"  mumbled  an  old  Sister  of  Charity  rather 
crossly. 

The  two  young  men  with  the  same  identical 
oddity  of  gait  were  salesmen  of  artificial  legs,  each 
one  a  wearer  and  demonstrator  of  his  wares.  The 
first,  from  Ohio,  had  lost  his  leg  in  a  railroad  acci- 
dent two  years  before,  and  the  second,  a  Virgin- 
ian with  a  strong  accent,  had  been  done  for  in  a 
motor-car  smashup.  One  morning  the  man  from 
Ohio  gave  us  a  kind  of  danse  macabre  on  the  deck; 
rolling  his  trouser  leg  high  above  his  artificial 
shin,  he  walked,  leaped,  danced,  and  ran.  "  Can 
you  beat  that?"  he  asked  with  pardonable  pride. 
"Think  what  these  will  mean  to  the  soldiers." 
Meanwhile,  with  slow  care,  the  Virginian  ex- 
plained the  ingenious  mechanism. 

Strange  tatters  of  conversation  rose  from  the 
deck.  "  Poor  child,  she  lost  her  husband  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  "  —  "  Third  shipment  of  bosses  " 
—  "I  was  talking  with  a  feller  from  the  Atlas 
Steel  Company"  —  "Edouard  is  somewhere  near 

12 


The  Rochambeau  s'e?i  va-t-en  Guerre 

Arras";  there  were  disputes  about  the  outcome 
of  the  war,  and  arguments  over  profits.  A  volu- 
ble French  woman,  whose  husband  was  a  pastry 
cook  in  a  New  York  hotel  before  he  joined  the 
forces,  told  me  how  she  had  wandered  from  one 
war  movie  to  another  hoping  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
her  husband,  and  had  finally  seen  "  some  one  who 
resembled  him  strongly"  on  the  screen  in  Harlem. 
She  had  a  picture  of  him,  a  thin,  moody  fellow 
with  great,  saber  whiskers  like  Rostand's  and  a 
high,  narrow  forehead  curving  in  on  the  sides  be- 
tween the  eyebrows  and  the  hair.  "He  is  a  Chas- 
seur alpin,"  she  said  with  a  good  deal  of  pride, 
"  and  they  are  holding  his  place  for  him  at  the  ho- 
tel. He  was  wounded  last  month  in  the  shoulder. 
I  am  going  to  the  hospital  at  Lyons  to  see  him." 
The  day's  sunset  was  at  its  end,  and  a  great  mass 
of  black  clouds  surged  over  the  eastern  horizon, 
turning  the  seas  ahead  to  a  leaden  somberness  that 
lowered  in  menacing  contrast  to  the  golden  streaks 
of  dying  day.  The  air  freshened,  salvos  of  rain 
fell  hissing  into  the  dark  waters,  and  violet  cords 
of  lightning  leaped  between  sea  and  sky.  Echoing 
thunder  rolled  long  through  unseen  abysses.  In 
the  deserted  salon  I  found  the  young  Frenchman 
with  the  star-shaped  scar  reading  an  old  copy  of 

13 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"La  Revue."  He  had  been  an  officer  in  the  Chas- 
seurs-a-pied  until  a  fearful  wound  had  incapaci- 
tated him  for  further  service,  and  had  then  joined 
the  staff  of  a  great,  conservative  Parisian  weekly. 
The  man  was  a  disciple  of  Ernest  Psichari,  the 
soldier  mystic  who  died  so  superbly  at  Charleroi 
in  the  dreadful  days  before  the  Marne.  From  him 
I  learned  something  of  the  French  conception  of 
the  idea  of  war.  It  was  not  uninteresting  to  com- 
pare the  French  point  of  view  with  the  German, 
and  we  talked  late  into  the  night  while  the  ship 
was  plunging  through  the  storm.  An  article  in  the 
review,  "La  Psychologie  des  Barbares,"  was  the 
starting-point  of  our  conversation. 

"You  must  remember  that  the  word  'bar- 
barian' which  we  apply  to  the  Germans,  is  un- 
derstood by  the  French  intellectually,"  said  he. 
"Not  only  do  German  atrocities  seem  barbarous, 
but  their  thought  also.  Consider  the  respective 
national  conceptions  of  the  idea  of  war.  To  the 
Germans,  war  is  an  end  in  itself,  and  in  itself  and 
in  all  its  effects  perfect  and  good.  To  the  French 
mind,  this  conception  of  war  is  barbaric,  for  war 
is  not  good  in  itself  and  may  be  fatal  to  both  vic- 
tor and  vanquished."  (He  spoke  a  beautiful, 
lucid  French  with  a  sort  of  military  preciseness.) 

14 


The  Rochambeau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

"It  was  Ernest  Psichari  who  revealed  to  us  the 
raison  d'etre  of  arms  in  modern  life,  and  taught 
us  the  meaning  of  war.  To  him,  war  was  no  sav- 
age ruee,  but  the  discipline  of  history  for  which 
every  nation  must  be  prepared,  a  terrible  disci- 
pline neither  to  be  sought,  nor  rejected  when  prof- 
fered. Thus  the  Boches,  once  their  illusion  of  the 
glory  of  war  is  smashed,  have  nothing  to  fall  back 
on,  but  the  French  point  of  view  is  stable  and 
makes  for  a  good  morale.  Psichari  was  the  intel- 
lectual leader  of  that  movement  for  the  regener- 
ation of  the  army  which  has  saved  France.  When 
the  doctrines  of  pacificism  began  to  be  preached 
in  France,  and  cries  of  'A  bas  I'armee'  were 
heard  in  the  streets,  Psichari  showed  that  the 
army  was  the  only  institution  left  in  our  indus- 
trialized world  with  the  old  ideals  and  the  power 
to  teach  them.  Quand  on  a  tout  dit,  the  military 
ideals  of  honor,  duty,  and  sacrifice  of  one's  all  for 
the  common  good  are  the  fundamentals  of  char- 
acter. Psichari  turned  this  generation  from  a 
generation  of  dreamers  to  a  generation  of  sol- 
diers, knowing  why  they  were  soldiers,  glad  to  be 
soldiers.  The  army  saved  the  morale  of  France 
when  the  Church  had  lost  its  hold,  and  the  pubHc 
schools  had  been  delivered  to  the  creatures  of 

IS 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

sentimental  doctrinaire  government.  Was  it  not 
a  pity  that  Psichari  should  have  died  so  young?" 

"Did  you  know  him?"  I  asked. 

"Yes;  I  saw  something  of  him  in  Africa.  The 
mystery  of  the  East  had  profoundly  stirred  him. 
He  was  a  dark,  serious  fellow  with  something  of 
the  profile  of  his  grandfather,  Ernest  Renan.  At 
Charleroi,  after  an  heroic  stand,  he  and  every 
man  of  his  squad  died  beside  the  guns  they 
served." 

Long  after,  at  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  I  went  to 
the  trenches  to  get  a  young  sergeant.  His  friends 
had  with  clumsy  kindness  gathered  together  his 
little  belongings  and  put  them  in  the  ambulance. 
"As  tu  trouve  mon  livre?"  (Have  you  found 
my  book?)  he  asked  anxiously,  and  they  tossed 
beside  the  stretcher  a  trench-mired  copy  of 
Psichari's  "L'Appel  des  Armes." 

One  morning,  just  at  dawn,  we  drew  near  a  low, 
sandy  coast,  and  anchored  at  the  mouth  of  the 
great  estuary  of  the  Gironde.  A  spindly  light- 
house was  flashing,  seeming  more  to  reflect  the 
sunlight  from  outside  than  to  be  burning  within, 
and  a  current  the  color  of  coffee  and  cream  with  a 
dash  of  vermilion  in  it,  went  by  us  mottled  with 
patches  of  floating  mud.  From  the  deck  one  had 
i6 


The  Rochamheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

an  extraordinary  view,  a  ten-mile  sweep  of  the 
strangely  colored  water,  the  hemisphere  of  the 
heavens  all  of  one  greenish-blue  tint,  and  a  nar- 
row strip  of  nondescript,  sandy  coast  suspended 
somehow  between  the  strange  sea  and  unlovely 
sky.  At  noon,  the  Rochambeau  began  at  a  good 
speed  her  journey  up  the  river,  passing  tile- 
roofed  villages  and  towns  built  of  pumice-gray 
stone,  and  great  flat  islands  covered  with  acres 
upon  acres  of  leafy,  bunchy  vines.  There  was  a 
scurry  to  the  rail;  some  one  cried,  "Voila  des 
Boches,"  and  I  saw  working  in  a  vineyard  half  a 
dozen  men  in  gray-green  German  regimentals.  A 
poilu  in  a  red  cap  was  standing  nonchalantly  be- 
side them.  As  the  Rochambeau,  following  the 
channel,  drew  incredibly  close  to  the  bank,  the 
Germans  leaned  on  their  hoes  and  watched  us 
pass,  all  save  one,  who  continued  to  hoe  indus- 
triously round  the  roots  of  the  vines,  ignoring  us 
with  a  Roman's  disdain.  *'  Comme  ils  sont  laids" 
(How  ugly  they  are) ,  said  a  voice.  There  was  no 
surprise  in  the  tone,  which  expressed  the  expected 
confirmation  of  a  past  judgment.  It  was  the  pas- 
try cook's  voluble  wife  who  had  spoken.  The 
land  through  which  we  were  passing,  up  to  that 
time  simply   the  pleasant   countryside   of   the 

17 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

Bordelais,  turned  in  an  instant  to  the  France  of 
the  Great  War. 

Late  in  the  afternoon,  the  river,  slowly  narrow- 
ing, turned  a  great  bend,  and  the  spires  of  Bor- 
deaux, violet-gray  in  the  smoky  rose  of  early 
twilight,  were  seen  just  ahead.  A  broad,  paved, 
dirty  avenue,  with  the  river  on  one  side  and  a  row 
of  shabby  houses  on  the  other,  led  from  the  docks 
to  the  city,  and  down  this  street,  marching  with 
Oriental  dignity,  came  a  troop  of  Arabs.  There 
was  a  picture  of  a  fat  sous-officier  leading,  of 
brown-white  rags  and  mantles  waving  in  the 
breeze  blowing  from  the  harbor,  of  lean,  muscu- 
lar, black-brown  legs,  and  dark,  impassive  faces. 
"Algerian  recruits,"  said  an  oflScer  of  the  boat. 
It  was  a  first  glimpse  at  the  universality  of  the 
war;  it  held  one's  mind  to  realize  that  while  some 
were  quitting  their  Devon  crofts,  others  were 
leaving  behind  them  the  ancestral  well  at  the 
edges  of  the  ancient  desert.  A  faint  squeaking 
of  strange  pipes  floated  on  the  twilight  air. 

There  came  an  official  examination  of  our  pa- 
pers, done  in  a  businesslike  way,  the  usual  rum- 
pus of  the  customs,  and  we  were  free  to  land  in 
France.  That  evening  a  friend  and  I  had  dinner 
in  a  great  cafe  opening  on  the  principal  square  in 


The  Rochambeau  s'e?t  va-t-en  Guerre 

Bordeaux,  and  tried  to  analyze  the  difference 
between  the  Bordeaux  of  the  past  and  the  Bor- 
deaux of  the  war.  The  ornate  restaurant,  done  in 
a  kind  of  Paris  Exhibition  style,  and  decorated 
with  ceiling  frescoes  of  rosy,  naked  Olympians 
floating  in  golden  mists  and  sapphire  skies,  was 
full  of  movement  and  light,  crowds  passed  by  on 
the  sidewalks,  there  were  sounds  —  laughter. 

"Looks  just  the  same  to  me,"  said  my  friend, 
an  American  journalist  who  had  been  there  in 
igi2.  "Of  course  there  are  more  soldiers.  Out- 
side of  that,  and  a  lack  of  taxicabs  and  motor- 
cars, the  town  has  not  changed." 

But  there  was  a  difference,  and  a  great  differ- 
ence. There  was  a  terrible  absence  of  youth.  Not 
that  youth  was  entirely  absent  from  the  tables 
and  the  trottoirs;  it  was  visible,  putty-faced  and 
unhealthy-looking,  afraid  to  meet  the  gaze  of  a 
man  in  uniform,  the  ^liizhlt  jeunesse  that  could 
not  pass  the  physical  examination  of  the  army. 
Most  of  the  other  young  men  who  bent  over  the 
tables  talking,  or  leaned  back  on  a  divan  to  smoke 
cigarettes,  were  strangers,  and  I  saw  many  who 
were  unquestionably  Roumanians  or  Greeks.  A 
little  apart,  at  a  corner  table,  a  father  and  mother 
were  dining  with  a  boy  in  a  uniform  much  too 

19 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

large  for  him;  —  I  fancied  from  the  cut  of  his 
clothes  that  he  belonged  to  a  young  squad  still 
under  instruction  in  the  garrisons,  and  that  he 
was  enjoying  a  night  off  with  his  family.  Screened 
from  the  rest  by  a  clothes  rack,  a  larky  young  lieu- 
tenant was  discreetly  conversing  with  a  "  daugh- 
ter of  joy,"  and  an  elderly  English  officer,  severely 
proper  and  correct,  was  reading  "Punch"  and 
sipping  red  wine  in  Britannic  isolation.  Across 
the  street  an  immense  poster  announced,  "Con- 
ference in  aid  of  the  Belgian  Red  Cross  —  the 
German'  Outrages  in  Louvain,  Malines,  and 
Liege  —  illustrated." 

We  finished  our  dinner,  which  was  good  and 
not  costly,  and  started  to  walk  to  our  hotel. 
Hardly  had  we  turned  the  corner  of  the  Place, 
when  the  life  of  Bordeaux  went  out  like  a  torch 
extinguished  by  the  wind.  It  was  still  early  in  the 
evening,  there  was  a  sound  of  an  orchestra  some- 
where behind,  yet  ahead  of  us,  lonely  and  still, 
with  its  shops  closed  and  its  sidewalks  deserted, 
was  one  of  the  greater  streets  of  Bordeaux. 
Through  the  drawn  curtains  of  second  stories 
over  little  groceries  and  baker-shops  shone  the 
yellow  light  of  lamps.  What  had  happened  to  the 
Jean,  Paul,  and  Pierre  of  this  dark  street  since 
20 


The  Rocha?nbeau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

the  war  began?  What  tragedies  of  sorrow  and 
loneliness  might  these  silent  windows  not  conceal? 
And  every  French  city  is  much  the  same;  one 
notices  in  them  all  the  subtle  lack  of  youth,  and 
the  animation  of  the  great  squares  in  contrast  to 
the  somber  loneliness  of  streets  and  quarters 
which  once  were  alive  and  gay.  At  the  Place  de 
rOpera  in  Paris,  the  whirlpool  of  Parisian  life  is 
still  turning,  but  the  great  streets  leading  away 
from  the  Place  de  I'Etoile  are  quiet.  Young 
and  old,  laborer  and  shopkeeper,  boulevardier 
and  apache  are  far  away  holding  the  tragic 
lines. 

The  next  morning  at  the  station,  I  had  my  first 
glimpse  of  that  mighty  organization  which  sur- 
rounds the  militaire.  There  was  a  special  entrance 
for  soldiers  and  a  special  exit  for  soldiers,  and  at 
both  of  these  a  long  file  of  blue-clad  poilus  waited 
for  the  countersigning  of  their  furlough  slips  and 
miUtary  tickets.  The  mud  of  the  trenches  still 
stained  the  bottom  edges  of  their  overcoats,  and 
their  steel  helmets  were  dented  and  dull.  There 
was  something  fine  about  the  faces  collectively; 
there  was  a  certain  look  of  tried  endurance  and 
perils  bravely  borne.  I  heard  those  on  furlough 
telling  the  names  of  their  home  villages  to  the 

21 


A  Volimteer  Poilu 

officer  in  charge,  —  pleasant  old  names,  Saint- 
Pierre  aux  Vignes,  La  Tour  du  Roi. 

A  big,  obese,  middle-aged  civilian  dressed  in  a 
hideous  greenish  suit,  and  wearing  a  pancake  cap, 
sat  opposite  me  in  the  compartment  I  had  chosen. 
There  was  a  hard,  unfriendly  look  in  his  large,  fat- 
encircled  eyes,  a  big  mustache  curved  straight  out 
over  his  lips,  and  the  short  finger  nails  of  his 
square,  puffy  fingers  were  deeply  rimmed  with 
dirt.  He  caught  sight  of  me  reading  a  copy  of  an 
English  weekly,  and  after  staring  at  me  with  an 
interest  not  entirely  free  from  a  certain  hostility, 
retreated  behind  the  pages  of  the  "Matin,"  and 
began  picking  his  teeth.  Possibly  he  belonged  to 
that  provincial  and  prejudiced  handful  to  whom 
England  will  always  be  "Perfidious  Albion,"  or 
else  he  took  me  for  an  English  civilian  dodging 
military  service.  The  French  press  was  following 
the  English  recruiting  campaign  very  closely,  and 
the  system  of  volunteer  service  was  not  without 
its  critics.  "Conscription  being  considered  in 
England"  (On  discute  la  conscription  en  Angle- 
terre),  announced  the  "Matin"  discreetly. 

It  was  high  noon;  the  train  had  arrived  at 
Angouleme,  and  was  taking  aboard  a  crowd  of 
convalescents.    On  the  station  platform,  their 

22 


The  Rochamheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

faces  relentlessly  illumined  by  the  brilliant  light, 
stood  about  thirty  soldiers;  a  few  were  leaning  on 
canes,  one  was  without  a  right  arm,  some  had  still 
the  pallor  of  the  sick,  others  seemed  able-bodied 
and  hearty.  Every  man  wore  on  the  bosom  of  his 
coat  about  half  a  dozen  little  aluminum  medals 
dangling  from  bows  of  tricolor  ribbon.  "Pour  les 
blesses,  s'il  vous  plait,"  cried  a  tall  young  woman 
in  the  costume  and  blue  cape  of  a  Red-Cross  nurse 
as  she  walked  along  the  platform  shaking  a  tin 
collection  box  under  the  windows  of  the  train. 

To  our  compartment  came  three  of  the  con- 
valescents. One  was  a  sturdy,  farmhand  sort  of 
fellow,  with  yellow  hair  and  a  yellow  mustache  — 
the  kind  of  man  who  might  have  been  a  Norman; 
he  wore  khaki  puttees,  brown  corduroy  trousers, 
and  a  jacket  which  fitted  his  heavy,  vigorous 
figure  rather  snugly.  Another  was  a  little  soul 
dressed  in  the  "blue  horizon"  from  head  to  foot, 
a  homely  little  soul  with  an  egg-shaped  head, 
brown-green  eyes,  a  retreating  chin,  and  irregular 
teeth.  The  last,  wearing  the  old  tenue,  black 
jacket  and  red  trousers,  was  a  good-looking  fellow 
with  rather  handsome  brown  eyes.  Comfortably 
stretched  in  a  corner,  the  Norman  was  deftly 
cutting  slices  of  bread  and  meat  which  he  offered 

23 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

to  his  companions.  Catching  sight  of  my  English 
paper,  all  three  stared  at  me  with  an  interest  and 
friendliness  that  was  in  ps3xhological  contrast  to 
the  attitude  of  the  obese  civilian. 

"Anglais?"  asked  the  Norman. 

The  civilian  watched  for  my  answer. 

"Non  —  Americain,"  I  replied. 

"Tiens,"  they  said  politely. 

"  Do  you  speak  English?  "  asked  the  homely  one. 

"Yes,"  I  answered. 

The  Norman  fished  a  creased  dirty  letter  and  a 
slip  of  paper  from  his  wallet  and  handed  them  to 
me  for  inspection. 

"I  found  them  in  a  trench  we  shared  with  the 
English,"  he  explained.  "These  puttees  are  Eng- 
lish; a  soldier  gave  them  to  me."  He  exhibited  his 
legs  with  a  good  deal  of  satisfaction. 

I  examined  the  papers  that  had  been  given  me. 
The  first  was  a  medical  prescription  for  an  anti- 
lice  ointment  and  the  second  an  illiterate  letter 
extremely  difficult  to  decipher,  mostly  about 
somebody  whom  the  writer  was  having  trouble  to 
manage,  "now  that  you  aren't  here."  I  trans- 
lated as  well  as  I  could  for  an  attentive  audience. 
"Toujours  les  totos,"  they  cried  merrily  when  I 
explained  the  prescription.    A  spirit  of  good- 

24 


The  Rocha?nheau  s'en  va-t-en  Guerre 

fellowship  pervaded  the  compartment,  till  even 
the  suspicious  civilian  unbent,  and  handed  round 
post-card  photographs  of  his  two  sons  who  were 
somewhere  en  Champagne.  Not  a  one  of  the 
three  soldiers  could  have  been  much  over  twenty- 
one,  but  they  wers  not  boys,  but  men,  serious 
men,  tried  and  disciplined  by  war.  The  homely 
one  gave  me  one  of  his  many  medals  which  he 
wore  "to  please  the  good  Sisters";  on  one  side  in 
an  oval  of  seven  stars  was  the  Virgin  Mary,  and 
on  the  other,  the  determined  features  of  General 
Joffre. 

Just  at  sundown  we  crossed  the  great  plain  of 
La  Beauce.  Distant  villages  and  pointed  spires 
stood  silhouetted  in  violet-black  against  the  burn- 
ing midsummer  sky  and  darkness  was  falling 
upon  the  sweeping  golden  plain.  We  passed  ham- 
let after  hamlet  closed  and  shuttered,  though  the 
harvests  had  been  gathered  and  stacked.  There 
was  something  very  tragic  in  those  deserted,  out- 
lying farms.  The  train  began  to  rattle  through  the 
suburbs  of  Paris.  By  the  window  stood  the  Nor- 
man looking  out  on  the  winking  red  and  violet 
lights  of  the  railroad  yard.  "This  Paris?"  he 
asked.  "I  never  expected  to  see  Paris.  How  the 
war  sets  one  to  travehng!" 
25 


CHAPTER  n 

AN   UNKNOWN   PARIS   IN   THE   NIGHT    AND    RAIN 

It  was  Sunday  morning,  the  bells  were  ringing  to 
church,  and  I  was  strolling  in  the  gardens  of  the 
Tuileries.  A  bright  morning  sun  was  drying  the 
dewy  lawns  and  the  wet  marble  bodies  of  the  gods 
and  athletes,  the  leaves  on  the  trees  were  falling, 
and  the  French  autumn,  so  slow,  so  golden,  and 
so  melancholy,  had  begun.  At  the  end  of  the 
mighty  vista  of  the  Champs  £lysees,  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe  rose,  brown  and  vaporous  in  the  exha- 
lations of  the  quiet  city,  and  an  aeroplane  was 
maneuvering  over  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  a 
moving  speck  of  white  and  silver  in  the  soft, 
September  blue.  From  a  near-by  Punch  and 
Judy  show  the  laughter  of  little  children  floated 
down  the  garden  in  outbursts  of  treble  shrillness. 
"Villain,  monster,  scoundrel,"  squeaked  a  voice. 
Flopped  across  the  base  of  the  stage,  the  arms 
hanging  downwards,  was  a  prostrate  doll  which  a 
fine  manikin  in  a  Zouave's  uniform  belabored  with 
a  stick;  suddenly  it  stirred,  and,  with  a  comic 
effect,  lifted  its  puzzled,  wooden  head  to  the 
26 


An  Unknozvn  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

laughing  children.  Beneath  a  little  Prussian  hel- 
met was  the  head  of  William  of  Germany,  cari- 
catured with  Parisian  skill  into  a  scowling,  green 
fellow  with  a  monster  black  mustache  turned  up 
to  his  eyes.  "Lie  down! "  cried  the  Zouave  doll 
imperiously.  "  Here  is  a  love  pat  for  thee  from  a 
French  Zouave,  my  big  Boche."  And  he  struck 
him  down  again  with  his  staff. 

Soldiers  walked  in  the  garden,  —  permission- 
naires  (men  on  furlough)  out  for  an  airing  with 
their  rejoicing  families,  smart  young  English  sub- 
alterns, and  rosy-fleshed,  golden-haired  Flemings 
of  the  type  that  Rubens  drew.  But  neither  their 
presence  nor  the  sight  of  an  occasional  inutile 
(soldier  who  has  lost  a  limb),  pathetically  clumsy 
on  his  new  crutches,  quite  sent  home  the  presence 
of  the  war.  The  normal  life  of  the  city  was  power- 
ful enough  to  engulf  the  disturbance,  the  theaters 
were  open,  there  were  the  same  crowds  on  the 
boulevards,  and  the  same  gossipy  spectators  in 
the  sidewalk  cafes.  After  a  year  of  war  the  Pari- 
sians were  accustomed  to  soldiers,  cripples,  and 
people  in  mourning.  The  strongest  effect  of  the 
war  was  more  subtle  of  definition,  it  was  a  change 
in  the  temper  of  the  city.  Since  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  the  sham  Paris  that  was  "Gay  Paree" 
27 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

had  disappeared,  and  the  real  Paris,  the  Paris  of 
tragic  memories  and  great  men,  had  taken  its 
place.  An  old  Parisian  explained  the  change  to 
me  in  saying,  "Paris  has  become  more  French." 
Deprived  of  the  foreigner,  the  city  adapted  itself 
to  a  taste  more  Gallic;  faced  with  the  realities  of 
war,  it  exchanged  its  artificiality  for  that  sober 
reasonableness  which  is  the  normal  attitude  of  the 
nation. 

At  noon  I  left  the  garden  and  strolled  down  the 
Champs  Elysees  to  the  Porte  Maillot.  The  great 
salesrooms  of  the  German  motor-car  dealers  had 
been  given  by  the  Government  to  a  number  of 
military  charities  who  had  covered  the  trade  signs 
with  swathes  and  rosettes  of  their  national  colors. 
Under  the  banner  of  the  Belgians,  in  the  quondam 
hop  of  the  Mercedes,  was  an  exhibition  of  leather 
knickknacks,  baskets,  and  dolls  made  by  the 
blind  and  mutilated  soldiers.  The  articles  — 
children's  toys  for  the  most  part,  dwarfs  that 
rolled  over  and  over  on  a  set  -of  parallel  bars, 
Alsatian  lasses  with  flaxen  hair,  and  gay  tops  — 
were  exposed  on  a  row  of  tables  a  few  feet  back 
from  the  window.  By  the  Porte  Maillot,  some  of 
the  iron  saw-horses  with  sharpened  points,  which 
had  formed  part  of  the  barricade  built  there  in 
28 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

the  days  of  the  Great  Retreat,  lay,  a  villainous, 
rusty  heap,  in  a  grassy  ditch  of  the  city  wall;  a 
few  stumps  of  the  trees  that  had  been  then  cut 
down  were  still  visible,  and  from  a  railroad  tie 
embedded  in  the  sidewalk  hung  six  links  of  a  mas- 
sive chain.  Through  this  forgotten  flotsam  on  the 
great  shore  of  the  war,  the  quiet  crowds  went  in 
and  out  of  the  Maillot  entrance  to  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne.  There  was  a  sense  of  order  and  secur- 
ity in  the  air.  I  took  a  seat  on  the  terrace  of  a 
little  restaurant.  The  garfon  was  a  small  man  in 
the  fifties,  inclined  to  corpulence,  with  a  large 
head,  large,  blue-gray  eyes,  purplish  lips,  and 
blue-black  hair  cut  pompadour.  As  we  watched 
the  orderly,  Sunday  crowds  going  to  the  great 
park,  we  fell  into  conversation  about  the  calmness 
of  Paris.  "Yes,  it  is  calm,"  he  said;  "we  are  all 
waiting  (nous  at  tendons).  We  know  that  the  vic- 
tory will  be  ours  at  the  finish.  But  all  we  can  do 
is  to  wait.  I  have  two  sons  at  the  front."  He  had 
struck  the  keynote.  Paris  is  calmly  waiting  — 
waiting  for  the  end  of  the  war,  for  victory,  for  the 
return  of  her  children. 

Yet  in  this  great,  calm  city,  with  its  vaporous 
browns  and  slaty  blues,  and  its  characteristic 
acrid  smell  of  gasoline  fumes,  was  another  Paris,  a 
29 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

terrible  Paris,  which  I  was  that  night  to  see. 
Early  in  the  afternoon  a  dull  haze  of  leaden  clouds 
rose  in  the  southwest.  It  began  to  rain. 

In  a  great  garret  of  the  hospital,  under  a  high 
French  roof,  was  the  dormitory  of  the  volunteers 
attached  to  the  Paris  Ambulance  Section.  At 
night,  this  great  space  was  lit  by  only  one  light,  a 
battered  electric  reading-lamp  standing  on  a  kind 
of  laboratory  table  in  the  center  of  the  floor,  and 
window  curtains  of  dark-blue  cambric,  waving 
mysteriously  in  the  night  wind,  were  supposed 
to  hide  even  this  glimmer  from  the  eyes  of  raiding 
Zeppelins.  Looking  down,  early  in  the  evening, 
into  the  great  quadrangle  of  the  institution,  one 
saw  the  windows  of  the  opposite  wing  veiled  with 
this  mysterious  blue,  and  heard  all  the  feverish 
unrest  of  a  hospital,  the  steps  on  the  tiled  corri- 
dors, the  running  of  water  in  the  bathroom  taps, 
the  hard  clatter  of  surgical  vessels,  and  some- 
times the  cry  of  a  patient  having  a  painful  wound 
dressed.  But  late  at  night  the  confused  murmur 
of  the  battle  between  life  and  death  had  sub- 
sided, the  lights  in  the  wards  were  extinguished, 
and  only  the  candle  of  the  night  nurse,  seen  be- 
hind a  screen,  and  the  stertorous  breathing  of  the 

30 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  JVight  and  Rain 

many  sleepers,  brought  back  the  consciousness  of 
human  life.  I  have  often  looked  into  the  wards  as 
I  returned  from  night  calls  to  the  station  where 
we  received  the  wounded,  and  been  conscious,  as 
I  peered  silently  into  that  flickering  obscurity,  of 
the  vague  unrest  of  sleepers,  of  the  various  atti- 
tudes assumed,  the  arms  outstretched,  the  up- 
turned throats,  and  felt,  too,  in  the  still  room,  the 
mystic  presence  of  the  Angel  of  Pain. 

It  was  late  at  night,  and  I  stood  looking  out  of 
my  window  over  the  roofs  of  Neuilly  to  the  great, 
darkened  city  just  beyond.  From  somewhere 
along  the  tracks  of  the  "  Little  Belt "  railway  came 
a  series  of  piercing  shrieks  from  a  locomotive 
whistle.  It  was  raining  hard,  drumming  on  the 
slate  roof  of  the  dormitory,  and  somewhere  below 
a  gutter  gurgled  foolishly.  Far  away  in  the  corri- 
dor a  gleam  of  yellow  light  shone  from  the  open 
door  of  an  isolation  room  where  a  nurse  was 
watching  by  a  patient  dying  of  gangrene.  Two 
comrades  who  had  been  to  the  movies  at  the 
Gaumont  Palace  near  the  Place  Clichy  began  to 
talk  in  sibilant  whispers  of  the  evening's  enter- 
tainment, and  one  of  them  said,  "That  war  film 
was  a  corker;  did  you  spot  the  big  cuss  throwing 
the  grenades?"    "Yuh,  damn  good,"  answered 

31 


A  Volu7iteer  Poilu 

the  other  pulling  his  shirt  over  his  head.  It  was  a 
strange  crew  that  inhabited  these  quarters;  there 
were  idealists,  dreamers,  men  out  of  work,  simple 
rascals  and  adventurers  of  all  kinds.  To  my  right 
slept  a  big,  young  Westerner,  from  some  totally 
unknown  college  in  Idaho,  who  was  a  humani- 
tarian enthusiast  to  the  point  of  imbecility,  and 
to  the  left  a  middle-aged  rogue  who  indulged  in 
secret  debauches  of  alcohol  and  water  he  cajoled 
from  the  hospital  orderlies.  Yet  this  obscure  and 
motley  community  was  America's  contribution 
to  France.  I  fell  asleep. 

"Up,  birds!" 

The  lieutenant  of  the  Paris  Section,  a  mining 
engineer  with  a  picturesque  vocabulary  of  Neva- 
dan  profanity,  was  standing  in  his  pajama  trou- 
sers at  the  head  of  the  room,  holding  a  lantern  in 
his  hand.  "Up,  birds!"  he  called  again.  "Call's 
come  in  for  Lah  Chapelle."  There  were  uneasy 
movements  under  the  blankets,  inmates  of  ad- 
joining beds  began  to  talk  to  each  other,  and  some 
lit  their  bedside  candles.  The  chief  went  down 
both  sides  of  the  dormitory,  flashing  his  lantern 
before  each  bed,  ragging  the  sleepy.  "Get  up, 
So-and-So.  Well,  I  must  say,  Pete,  you  have  a 
hell  of  a  nerve."   There  were  glimpses  of  candle 

32 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  JVight  and  Rain 

flames,  bare  bodies  shivering  in  the  damp  cold, 
and  men  sitting  on  beds,  winding  on  their  puttees. 
"Gee!  listen  to  it  rain,"  said  somebody.  "What 
time  is  it?"  "Twenty  minutes  past  two."  Soon  the 
humming  and  drumming  of  the  motors  in  the  yard 
sounded  through  the  roaring  of  the  downpour. 

Down  in  the  yard  I  found  Oiler,  my  orderly, 
and  our  little  Ford  ambulance,  number  fifty- 
three.  One  electric  light,  of  that  sickly  yellow 
color  universal  in  France,  was  burning  over  the 
principal  entrance  to  the  hospital,  just  giving  us 
light  enough  to  see  our  way  out  of  the  gates. 
Down  the  narrow,  dark  Boulevard  Inkerman  we 
turned,  and  then  out  on  to  a  great  street  which  led 
into  the  "outer"  boulevard  of  De  Batignolles  and 
Clichy.  To  that  darkness  with  which  the  city,  in 
fear  of  raiding  aircraft,  has  hidden  itself,  was 
added  the  continuous,  pouring  rain.  In  the  light 
of  our  lamps,  the  wet,  golden  trees  of  the  black, 
silent  boulevards  shone  strangely,  and  the  illumi- 
nated advertising  kiosks  which  we  passed,  one 
after  the  other  at  the  corners  of  great  streets, 
stood  lonely  and  drenched,  in  the  swift,  white 
touch  of  our  radiance.  Black  and  shiny,  the 
asphalt  roadway  appeared  to  go  on  in  a  straight 
line  forever  and  forever. 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

Neither  in  residential,  suburban  Neuilly  nor  in 
deserted  Montmartre  was  there  a  light  to  be  seen, 
but  when  we  drew  into  the  working  quarter  of 
La  Chapelle,  lights  appeared  in  the  windows,  as  if 
some  toiler  of  the  night  was  expected  home  or 
starting  for  his  labor,  and  vague  forms,  battling 
with  the  rain  or  in  refuge  under  the  awning  of  a 
cafe,  were  now  and  then  visible.  From  the  end  of 
the  great,  mean  rue  de  La  Chapelle  the  sounds  of 
the  unrest  of  the  railroad  yards  began  to  be  heard, 
for  this  street  leads  to  the  freight-houses  near  the 
fortifications.  Our  objective  was  a  great  freight 
station  which  the  Government,  some  months 
before,  had  turned  into  a  receiving-post  for  the 
wounded;  it  lay  on  the  edge  of  the  yard,  some  dis- 
tance in  from  the  street,  behind  a  huddle  of  smaller 
sheds  and  outbuildings.  To  our  surprise  the  rue 
de  La  Chapelle  was  strewn  with  ambulances  rush- 
ing from  the  station,  and  along  two  sides  of  the 
great  yard,  where  the  merchandise  trucks  had 
formerly  turned  in,  six  or  seven  hundred  more 
ambulances  were  waiting.  We  turned  out  of  the 
dark,  rain-swept  city  into  this  hurly-burly  of 
shouts,  snorting  of  engines,  clashing  of  gears,  and 
whining  of  brakes,  illuminated  with  a  thousand 
intermeshing  beams  of  headlights  across  whose 

34 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

brilliance  the  rain  fell  in  sloping,  liquid  rods. 
"Quick,  a  small  car  this  way!"  cried  some  one  in 
an  authoritative  tone,  and  number  fifty-three 
ran  up  an  inclined  plane  into  the  enormous  shed 
which  had  been  reserved  for  the  loading  of  the 
wounded  into  the  ambulances. 

We  entered  a  great,  high,  white-washed,  ware- 
house kind  of  place,  about  four  hundred  feet  long 
by  four  hundred  feet  wide,  built  of  wood  evi- 
dently years  before.  In  the  middle  of  this  shed 
was  an  open  space,  and  along  the  walls  were  rows 
of  ambulances.  Brancardiers  (stretcher-bearers; 
from  brancard,  a  stretcher)  were  loading  wounded 
into  these  cars,  and  as  soon  as  one  car  was  filled, 
it  would  go  out  of  the  hall  and  another  would  take 
its  place.  There  was  an  infernal  din;  the  place 
smelled  like  a  stuffy  garage,  and  was  full  of  blue 
gasoline  fumes;  and  across  this  hurly-burly,  which 
was  increasing  every  minute,  were  carried  the 
wounded,  often  nothing  but  human  bundles  of 
dirty  blue  cloth  and  fouled  bandages.  Every  one 
of  these  wounded  soldiers  was  saturated  with 
mud,  a  gray-white  mud  that  clung  moistly  to 
their  overcoats,  or,  fully  dry,  colored  every  part 
of  the  uniform  with  its  powder.  One  saw  men 
that  appeared  to  have  rolled  over  and  over  in  a 

35 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

puddle  bath  of  this  whitish  mud,  and  sometimes 
there  was  seen  a  sinister  mixture  of  blood  and 
mire.  There  is  nothing  romantic  about  a  wounded 
soldier,  for  his  condition  brings  a  special  emphasis 
on  our  human  relation  to  ordinary  meat.  Dirty, 
exhausted,  unshaven,  smelling  of  the  trenches,  of 
his  wounds,  and  of  the  antiseptics  on  his  wounds, 
the  soldier  comes  from  the  train  a  sight  for  which 
only  the  great  heart  of  Francis  of  Assisi  could 
have  adequate  pity.  Oiler  and  I  went  through  an 
opening  in  a  canvas  partition  into  that  part  of  the 
great  shed  where  the  wounded  were  being  un- 
loaded from  the  trains.  In  width,  this  part  meas- 
ured four  hundred  feet,  but  in  length  it  ran  to 
eight  hundred.  In  two  rows  of  six  each,  separated 
by  an  aisle  about  eight  feet  wide,  were  twelve 
little  houses,  about  forty  feet  square,  built  of 
stucco,  each  one  painted  a  different  color.  The 
woodwork  of  the  exterior  was  displayed  through 
the  plaster  in  the  Elizabethan  fashion,  and  the 
little  sheds  were  clean,  solidly  built,  and  solidly 
roofed.  In  one  of  these  constructions  was  the 
bureau  of  the  staff  which  assigned  the  wounded 
to  the  hospitals,  in  another  was  a  fully  equipped 
operating-room,  and  in  the  others,  rows  of 
stretcher-horses,  twenty-five  to  a  side,  on  which 

36 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  JVight  and  Rain 

the  wounded  were  laid  until  a  hospital  number 
had  been  assigned  them.  A  slip,  with  these  hos- 
pital numbers  on  it,  the  names  of  the  patients, 
and  the  color  of  the  little  house  in  which  they 
were  to  be  found,  was  then  given  to  the  chauffeur 
of  an  ambulance,  who,  with  this  slip  in  hand  and 
followed  by  a  number  of  stretcher-bearers,  imme- 
diately gathered  his  patients.  A  specimen  slip 
might  run  thus  —  "To  Hospital  32,  avenue  de 
lena,  Paul  Chaubard,  red  barraque,  Jules  Adamy, 
green  barraque,  and  Alphonse  Fort,  ochre  bar- 
raque." To  give  a  French  touch  to  the  scene,  this 
great  space,  rapidly  filling  with  human  beings  in 
an  appalling  state  of  misery,  as  the  aftermath  of 
the  offensive  broke  on  us,  was  decorated  with 
evergreen  trees  and  shrubs  so  that  the  effect  was 
that  of  an  indoor  fair  or  exhibition;  you  felt  as  if 
you  might  get  samples  of  something  at  each  bar- 
raque, as  the  French  termed  the  little  houses.  To 
the  side  of  these  there  was  a  platform,  and  a 
sunken  track  running  along  the  wall,  and  behind, 
a  great  open  space  set  with  benches  for  those  of 
the  wounded  able  to  walk.  Some  fifty  great, 
cylindrical  braziers,  which  added  a  strange  bit  of 
rosy,  fiery  color  to  the  scene,  warmed  this  space. 
When  the  wounded  had  begun  to  arrive  at  about 

37 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

midnight,  a  regiment  of  Zouaves  was  at  hand  to 
help  the  regular  stretcher-bearers;  these  Zouaves 
were  all  young,  "husky"  men  dressed  in  the 
baggy  red  trousers  and  short  blue  jacket  of  their 
classic  uniform,  and  their  strength  was  in  as  much 
of  a  contrast  to  the  weakness  of  those  whom  they 
handled  as  their  gay  uniform  was  in  contrast  to 
the  miry,  horizon  blue  of  the  combatants.  There 
was  something  grotesque  in  seeing  two  of  these 
powerful  fellows  carrying  to  the  wagons  a  dirty 
blue  bundle  of  a  human  being. 

With  a  piercing  shriek,  that  cut  like  a  gash 
through  the  uproar  of  the  ambulance  engines,  a 
sanitary  train,  the  seventh  since  midnight,  came 
into  the  station,  and  so  smoothly  did  it  run  by, 
its  floors  on  a  level  with  the  main  floor,  that  it 
seemed  an  illusion,  like  a  stage  train.  On  the 
platform  stood  some  Zouaves  waiting  to  unload 
the  passengers,  while  others  cleared  the  barraques 
and  helped  the  feeble  to  the  ambulances.  There 
was  a  steady  line  of  stretchers  going  out,  yet  the 
station  was  so  full  that  hardly  a  bit  of  the  vast 
floor  space  was  unoccupied.  One  walked  down  a 
narrow  path  between  a  sea  of  bandaged  bodies. 
Shouldering  what  baggage  they  had,  those  able  to 
walk  plodded  in  a  strange,  slow  tempo  to  the 

38 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

waiting  automobiles.  All  by  themselves  were 
about  a  hundred  poor,  ragged  Germans,  wounded 
prisoners,  brothers  of  the  French  in  this  terrible 
fraternity  of  pain. 

About  four  or  five  hundred  assis  (those  able  to 
sit  up)  were  waiting  on  benches  at  the  end  of  the 
hall.  Huddled  round  the  rosy,  flickering  braziers, 
they  sat  profoundly  silent  in  the  storm  and  din 
that  moved  about  them,  rarely  conversing  with 
each  other.  I  imagine  that  the  stupefaction, 
which  is  the  physiological  reaction  of  an  intense 
emotional  and  muscular  effort,  had  not  yet  worn 
away.  There  were  fine  heads  here  and  there.  For- 
getful of  his  shattered  arm,  an  old  fellow,  with 
the  face  of  Henri  Quatre,  eagle  nose,  beard,  and 
all,  sat  with  his  head  sunken  on  his  chest  in 
mournful  contemplation,  and  a  fine-looking, 
black-haired,  dragoon  kind  of  youth  with  the 
wildest  of  eyes  clung  like  grim  death  to  a  German 
helmet.  The  same  expression  of  resigned  fatalism 
was  common  to  all. 

Sometimes  the  chauffeurs  who  were  waiting  for 
their  clients  got  a  chance  to  talk  to  one  of  the  sol- 
diers. Eager  for  news,  they  clustered  round  the 
wounded  man,  bombarding  him  with  questions. 

"Are  the  Boches  retreating?" 

39 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"When  did  it  begin?" 

"Just  where  is  the  attack  located?" 

"Are  things  going  well  for  us?" 

The,  soldier,  a  big  young  fellow  with  a  tanned 
face,  somewhat  pale  from  the  shock  of  a  ripped-up 
forearm,  answered  the  questions  good-naturedly, 
though  the  struggle  had  been  on  so  great  a  scale 
that  he  could  only  tell  about  his  own  hundred  feet 
of  trench.  Indeed  the  substance  of  his  informa- 
tion was  that  there  had  been  a  terrible  bombard- 
ment of  the  German  Hues,  and  then  an  attack  by 
the  French  which  was  still  in  progress. 

"Are  we  going  to  break  clear  through  the 
lines?" 

The  soldier  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "They 
hope  to,"  he  replied. 

Just  beyond  us,  in  one  of  the  thousand  stretch- 
ers on  the  floor,  a  small  bearded  man  had  died. 
With  his  left  leg  and  groin  swathed  in  bandages, 
he  lay  flat  on  his  back,  his  mouth  open,  muddy, 
dirty,  and  dead.  From  time  to  time  the  living 
on  each  side  stole  curious,  timid  glances  at  him. 
Then,  suddenly,  some  one  noticed  the  body,  and 
two  stretcher-bearers  carried  it  away,  and  two 
more  brought  a  living  man  there  in  its  place. 

The  turmoil  continued  to  increase.  At  least  a 
40 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  Might  and  Rain 

thousand  motor-ambulances,  mobilized  from  all 
over  the  region  of  Paris,  were  now  on  hand  to 
carry  away  the  human  wreckage  of  the  great 
offensive.  Ignorant  of  the  ghastly  army  at  its  doors, 
Paris  slept.  The  rain  continued  to  fall  heavily. 

"Eh  la,  comrade." 

A  soldier  in  the  late  thirties,  with  a  pale,  re- 
fined face,  hailed  me  from  his  stretcher, 

"You  speak  French?" 

I  nodded. 

"I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  do  me  a  favor  — 
write  to  my  wife  who  is  here  in  Paris,  and  tell  her 
that  I  am  safe  and  shall  let  her  know  at  once  what 
hospital  I  am  sent  to.  I  shall  be  very  grateful." 

He  let  his  shoulders  sink  to  the  stretcher  again 
and  I  saw  him  now  and  then  looking  for  me  in  the 
crowd.  Catching  my  eye,  he  smiled. 

A  train  full  of  Algerian  troops  came  puffing  into 
the  station,  the  uproar  hardly  rising  above  the 
general  hubbub.  The  passengers  who  were  able 
to  walk  got  out  first,  some  limping,  some  walking 
firmly  with  a  splendid  Eastern  dignity.  These 
men  were  Arabs  and  Moors  from  Algeria  and 
Tunisia,  who  had  enlisted  in  the  colonial  armies. 
There  was  a  great  diversity  of  size  and  racial  type 
among  them,  some  being  splendid,  big  men  of  the 

41 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

type  one  imagines  Othello  to  have  been,  some 
chunkier  and  more  bullet-headed,  and  others  tall 
and  lean  with  interesting  aquiline  features.  I 
fancy  that  the  shorter,  rounder-skulled  ones  were 
those  with  a  dash  of  black  blood.  The  uniform,  of 
khaki-colored  woolen,  consisted  of  a  simple, 
short- waisted  jacket,  big  baggy  trousers,  puttees, 
and  a  red  fez  or  a  steel  helmet  with  the  lunar 
crescent  and  "R.F."  for  its  device.  We  heard 
rumors  about  their  having  attacked  a  village. 
Advancing  in  the  same  curious  tempo  as  the 
French,  they  passed  to  the  braziers  and  the 
wooden  benches.  Last  of  all  from  the  train,  hold- 
ing his  bandaged  arm  against  his  chest,  a  native 
corporal  with  the  features  of  a  desert  tribesman 
advanced  with  superb,  unconscious  stateliness. 
As  the  Algerians  sat  round  the  braziers,  their 
uniforms  and  brown  skins  presented  a  contrast  to 
the  pallor  of  the  French  in  their  bedraggled  blue, 
but  there  was  a  marked  similarity  of  facial  ex- 
pression. A  certain  racial  odor  rose  from  the 
Orientals. 

My  first  assignment,  two  Algerians  and  two 
Frenchmen,  took  me  to  an  ancient  Catholic  high 
school  which  had  just  been  improvised  into  a 
hospital  for  the  Oriental  troops.    It  lay,  dirty, 

42  . 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

lonely,  and  grim,  just  to  one  side  of  a  great  street 
on  the  edge  of  Paris,  and  had  not  been  occupied 
since  its  seizure  by  the  State.  Turning  in  through 
an  enormous  door,  lit  by  a  gas  globe  flaring  and 
flickering  in  the  torrents  of  rain,  we  found  our- 
selves in  an  enormous,  dark  courtyard,  where  a 
half-dozen  ambulances  were  already  waiting  to 
discharge  their  clients.  Along  one  wall  there  was 
a  flight  of  steps,  and  from  somewhere  beyond  the 
door  at  the  end  of  this  stair  shone  the  faintest 
glow  of  yellow  light. 

It  came  from  the  door  of  a  long-disused  school- 
room, now  turned  into  the  receiving-hall  of  this 
strange  hospital.  The  big,  high  room  was  lit  by 
one  light  only,  a  kerosene  hand  lamp  standing  on 
the  teacher's  desk,  and  so  smoked  was  the  chim- 
ney that  the  wick  gave  hardly  more  light  than  a 
candle.  There  was  just  enough  illumination  to 
see  about  thirty  Algerians  sitting  at  the  school 
desks,  their  big  bodies  crammed  into  the  little 
seats,  and  to  distinguish  others  lying  in  stretchers 
here  and  there  upon  the  floor.  At  the  teacher's 
table  a  little  French  adjutant  with  a  trim,  black 
mustache  and  a  soldier  interpreter  were  trying  to 
discover  the  identity  of  their  visitors. 

"Number  2215,"  (num6ro  deux  mille  deux  cent 

43 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

quinze),  the  officer  cried;  and  the  interpreter, 
leaning  over  the  adjutant's  shoulder  to  read  the 
name,  shouted,  "Mehemet  AU." 

There  was  no  answer,  and  the  Algerians  looked 
round  at  each  other,  for  all  the  world  like  children 
in  a  school.  It  was  very  curious  to  see  these  dark, 
heavy,  wdld  faces  bent  over  these  disused  desks. 

"Number  2168"  (numero  deux  mille  cent  soix- 
ante  huit),  cried  the  adjutant. 

"Abdullah  Taleb,"  cried  the  interpreter. 

"Moi,"  answered  a  voice  from  a  stretcher  in  the 
shadows  of  the  floor. 

"Take  him  to  room  six,"  said  the  adjutant,  in- 
dicating the  speaker  to  a  pair  of  stretcher-bearers. 
In  the  quieter  pauses  the  rain  was  heard  beating 
on  the  panes. 

There  are  certain  streets  in  Paris,  equally  un- 
known to  tourist  and  Parisian  —  obscure,  nar- 
row, cobble-stoned  lanes,  lined  by  waUs  conceal- 
ing little  orchards  and  gardens.  So  provincial  is 
their  atmosphere  that  it  would  be  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  believe  one's  self  on  the 
fringe  of  an  old  town,  just  w^here  little  bourgeois 
villas  begin  to  overlook  the  fields;  but  to  consider 
one's  self  just  beyond  the  heart  of  Paris  is  almost 
incredible.  Down  such  a  street,  in  a  great  garden, 

44 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

lay  the  institution  to  which  our  two  Frenchmen 
were  assigned.  We  had  a  hard  time  finding  it  in 
the  night  and  rain,  but  at  length,  discovering  the 
concierge's  bell,  we  sent  a  vigorous  peal  clanging 
through  the  darkness.  Oiler  lifted  the  canvas  flap 
of  the  ambulance  to  see  about  our  patients. 

"All  right  in  there,  boys?" 

"Yes,"  answered  a  voice. 

"Not  cold?" 

"Non.  Are  we  at  the  hospital?  " 

"Yes;  we  are  trying  to  wake  up  the  concierge." 

There  was  a  sound  of  a  key  in  a  lock,  and  a 
small,  dark  woman  opened  the  door.  She  was 
somewhat  spinstery  in  type,  her  thin,  black  hair 
was  neatly  parted  in  the  middle,  and  her  face  was 
shrewd,  but  not  unkindly. 
■    "  Deux  blesses  (two  wounded) ,  madame,"  said  I. 

The  woman  pulled  a  wire  loop  inside  the  door, 
and  a  far-off  bell  tinkled. 

"Come  in,"  she  said.  "The  porter  will  be  here 
immediately." 

We  stepped  into  a  little  room  with  a  kind  of 
English  look  to  it,  and  a  carbon  print  of  the  Sis- 
tine  Madonna  on  the  wall. 

"Are  they  seriously  wounded?"  she  asked. 

"I  cannot  say." 

45 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

A  sound  of  shuffling,  slippered  feet  was  heard, 
and  the  porter,  a  small,  beefy,  gray-haired  man  in 
the  fifties,  wearing  a  pair  of  rubber  boots,  and  a 
rain-coat  over  a  woolen  night-dress,  came  into  the 
room. 

"Two  wounded  have  arrived,"  said  the  lady. 
"You  are  to  help  these  messieurs  get  out  the 
stretchers." 

The  porter  looked  out  of  the  door  at  the  tail- 
light  of  the  ambulance,  glowing  red  behind  its 
curtain  of  rain. 

"  Mon  Dieu,  what  a  deluge!"  he  exclaimed,  and 
followed  us  forth.  With  an  "Easy  there,"  and 
"Lift  now,"  we  soon  had  both  of  our  clients  out 
of  the  ambulance  and  indoors.  They  lay  on  the 
floor  of  the  odd,  stiff,  little  room,  strange  intrud- 
ers of  its  primness;  the  first,  a  big,  heavy,  stolid, 
young  peasant  with  enormous,  flat  feet,  and  the 
second  a  small,  nervous,  city  lad,  with  his  hair 
in  a  bang  and  bright,  uneasy  eyes.  The  mud- 
stained  blue  of  the  uniforms  seemed  very  strange, 
indeed,  beside  the  Victorian  furniture  uphol- 
stered in  worn,  cherry-red  plush.  A  middle-aged 
servant  —  a  big-boned,  docile-looking  kind  of 
creature,  probably  the  porter's  wife  —  entered, 
followed  by  two  other  women,  the  last  two  wear- 

46' 


An  Unknown  Paris  in  J^ight  and  Rain 

ing  the  same  cut  of  prim  black  waist  and  skirt, 
and  the  same  pattern  of  white  wristlets  and  collar. 
We  then  carried  the  two  soldiers  upstairs  to  a 
back  room,  where  the  old  servant  had  filled  a  kind 
of  enamel  dishpan  with  soapy  water.  Very  gently 
and  deftly  the  beefy  old  porter  and  his  wife  took 
off  the  fouled,  blood-stained  uniforms  of  the  two 
fighting  men,  and  washed  their  bodies,  while  she 
who  had  opened  the  door  stood  by  and  super- 
intended all.  The  feverish,  bright-eyed  fellow 
seemed  to  be  getting  weaker,  but  the  big  peasant 
conversed  with  the  old  woman  in  a  low,  steady  tone, 
and  told  her  that  there  had  been  a  big  action. 

When  Oiler  and  I  came  downstairs,  two  little 
glasses  of  sherry  and  a  plate  of  biscuits  were 
hospitably  waiting  for  us.  There  was  something 
distinctly  English  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  room 
and  in  the  demeanor  of  the  two  prim  ladies  who 
stood  by.  It  roused  my  curiosity.  Finally  one  of 
them  said :  — 

"Are  you  English,  gentlemen?" 

"No,"  we  replied;  "Americans." 

"I  thought  you  might  be  English,"  she  repHed 
in  that  language,  which  she  spoke  very  clearly 
and  fluently.  "  Both  of  us  have  been  many  years 
in  England.  We  are  French  Protestant  deacon- 

47 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

esses,  and  this  is  our  home.  It  is  not  a  hospital. 
But  when  the  call  for  more  accommodations  for 
the  wounded  came  in,  we  got  ready  our  two  best 
rooms.  The  soldiers  upstairs  are  our  first  visitors." 

The  old  porter  came  uneasily  down  the  stair. 
"Mademoiselle  Pierre  says  that  the  doctor  must 
come  at  once,"  he  murmured,  "the  little  fellow 
(le  petit)  is  not  doing  well." 

We  thanked  the  ladies  gratefully  for  the  re- 
freshment, for  we  were  cold  and  soaked  to  the 
skin.  Then  we  went  out  again  to  the  ambulance 
and  the  rain.  A  faint  pallor  of  dawn  was  just 
beginning.  Later  in  the  morning,  I  saw  a  copy  of 
the  "Matin"  attached  to  a  kiosk;  it  said  some- 
thing about  "Grande  Victoire." 

Thus  did  the  great  offensive  in  Champagne 
come  to  the  city  of  Paris,  bringing  twenty  thou- 
sand men  a  day  to  the  station  of  La  Chapelle. 
For  three  days  and  nights  the  Americans  and  all 
the  other  ambulance  squads  drove  continuously. 
It  was  a  terrible  phase  of  the  conflict  to  see,  but 
he  who  neither  sees  nor  understands  it  cannot 
realize  the  soul  of  the  war.  Later,  at  the  trenches, 
I  saw  phases  of  the  war  that  were  spiritual,  heroic, 
and  close  to  the  divine,  but  this  phase  was,  in  its 
essence,  profoundly  animal. 


CHAPTER  m 

THE  GREAT   SWATHE  OF  THE   LINES 

The  time  was  coming  when  I  was  to  see  the  mys- 
terious region  whence  came  the  wounded  of  La 
Chapelle,  and,  a  militaire  myself,  share  the  life 
of  the  French  soldier.  Late  one  evening  in  Octo- 
ber, I  arrived  in  Nancy  and  went  to  a  hotel  I  had 
known  well  before  the  war.  An  old  porter,  a  man 
of  sixty,  with  big,  bowed  shoulders,  gray  hair, 
and  a  florid  face  almost  devoid  of  expression, 
carried  up  my  luggage,  and  as  I  looked  at  him, 
standing  in  the  doorway,  a  simple  figure  in  his 
striped  black  and  yellow  vest  and  white  apron,  I 
wondered  just  what  effect  the  war  had  had  on 
him.  Through  the  open  window  of  the  room,  seen 
over  the  dark  silhouette  of  the  roofs  of  Nancy, 
shone  the  glowing  red  sky  and  rolling  smoke  of  the 
vast  munition  works  at  Pompey  and  Frouard. 

"  You  were  not  here  when  I  came  to  the  hotel 
two  years  ago,"  said  I. 

"No,"  he  answered;  "I  have  been  here  only 
since  November,  1914." 

49 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"You  are  a  Frenchman?  There  was  a  Swiss 
here,  then." 

"Yes,  indeed,  I  am  Franfais,  monsieur.  The 
Swiss  is  now  a  waiter  in  a  cafe  of  the  Place  Stanis- 
las. It  is  something  new  to  me  to  be  a  hotel 
porter," 

"Tiens.  What  did  you  do?" 

"I  drove  a  coal  team,  monsieur." 

"How,  then,  did  you  happen  to  come  here?" 

"I  used  to  deliver  coal  to  the  hotel.  One  day  I 
heard  that  the  Swiss  had  gone  to  the  cafe  to  take 
the  place  of  a  garjon  whose  class  had  just  been 
called  out.  I  was  getting  sick  of  carrying  the 
heavy  sacks  of  coal,  and  being  always  out  of 
doors,  so  I  applied  for  the  porter's  job." 

"You  are  satisfied  with  the  change." 

"Oh,  yes,  indeed,  monsieur." 

"I  suppose  you  have  kinsmen  at  the  front." 

"Only  my  sister's  son,  monsieur," 

"In  the  active  forces?" 

"  No,  he  is  a  reservist.  He  is  a  man  thirty-five 
years  of  age.  He  was  wounded  by  a  shrapnel  ball 
in  the  groin  early  in  the  spring,  but  is  now  at  the 
front  again." 

"What  does  he  do  en  civil  ?" 

"He  is  a  furniture-maker,  monsieur." 

50 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

He  showed  no  sign  of  unrest  at  my  catechizing, 
and  plodded  off  down  the  green  velvet  carpet  to 
the  landing-stage  of  the  elevator.  In  the  street 
below  a  crowd  was  coming  out  of  the  silky  white 
radiance  of  the  lobby  of  a  cinema  into  the  violet 
rays  thrown  upon  the  sidewalk  from  the  illumi- 
nated sign  over  the  theater  door.  There  are  cer- 
tain French  cities  to  which  the  war  has  brought  a 
real  prosperity,  and  Nancy  was  then  one  of  them. 
The  thousands  of  refugees  from  the  frontier  vil- 
lages and  the  world  of  military  of&cials  and  soldier 
workmen  mobilized  in  the  ammunition  factories 
had  added  to  the  population  till  it  was  actually 
greater  than  it  had  been  before  the  war,  and 
with  this  new  population  had  come  a  development 
of  the  city's  commercial  Ufe.  The  middle  class 
was  making  money,  the  rich  were  getting  richer, 
and  Nancy,  hardly  more  than  eighteen  or  nine- 
teen miles  from  the  trenches,  forgot  its  danger  till, 
on  the  first  day  of  January,  1916,  the  Germans 
fired  several  shells  from  a  giant  mortar  or  a  ma- 
rine piece  into  the  town,  one  of  which  scattered 
the  fragments  of  a  big  five-story  apartment  house 
all  over  Nancy.  And  on  that  afternoon  thirty 
thousand  people  left  the  city. 

The  day  on  which  I  was  to  go  across  the  great 

51 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

swathe  of  the  front  to  the  first-line  trenches 
dawned  cool  and  sunny.  I  use  the  word  "  swathe" 
purposely,  for  only  by  that  image  can  the  real 
meaning  of  the  phrase  "  the  front"  be  understood. 
The  thick,  black  line  which  figures  on  the  war- 
maps  is  a  great  swathe  of  country  running,  with  a 
thousand  little  turns  and  twists  that  do  not  inter- 
fere with  its  general  regularity,  from  the  summits 
of  the  Vosges  to  the  yellow  dunes  of  the  North 
Sea.  The  relation  of  the  border  of  this  swathe  to 
the  world  beyond  is  the  relation  of  sea  to  land 
along  an  irregular  and  indented  coast.  Here  an 
isolated,  strategic  point,  fiercely  defended  by  the 
Germans,  has  extended  the  border  of  the  swathe 
beyond  the  usual  limits,  and  villages  thirteen  and 
fourteen  miles  from  the  actual  lines  have  been 
pounded  to  pieces  by  long-range  artillery  in  the 
hope  of  destroying  the  enemy's  communications; 
there  the  trenches  cross  an  obscure,  level  moor 
upon  whose  possession  nothing  particular  de- 
pends, and  the  swathe  narrows  to  the  villages 
close  by  the  lines.  This  swathe,  which  begins 
with  the  French  communications,  passes  the 
French  trenches,  leaps  "No  Man's  Land,"  and 
continues  beyond  the  German  trenches  to  the 
German  communications,  averages  about  twenty- 

52 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

two  miles  in  width.  The  territory  within  this 
swathe  is  inhabited  by  soldiers,  ruled  by  soldiers, 
worked  by  soldiers,  and  organized  for  war.  Some- 
tunes  the  transition  between  civilian  life  and  the 
life  of  the  swathe  is  abrupt,  as,  for  instance,  at 
Verdun,  where  the  villages  beyond  the  lines  have 
been  emptied  of  civilian  inhabitants  to  make 
room  for  the  soldiery;  but  at  other  times  the 
change  is  gradual  and  the  peasants  continue  to 
work  fields  almost  in  the  shadow  of  the  trenches. 
Since  the  line  of  trenches  was  organized  by  the 
Germans  only  after  a  series  of  engagements  along 
the  front,  during  which  the  battle-line  oscillated 
over  a  wide  territory,  the  approach  to  the  swathe 
is  often  through  a  region  of  desolated  villages 
sometimes  far  removed  from  the  present  trenches. 
Such  is  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  region  of  the 
Marne,  the  Argonne,  and  on  the  southern  bank  of 
the  Moselle.  Moss-overgrown  and  silent,  these 
villages  often  stand  deserted  in  the  fields  at  the 
entrance  to  the  swathe,  fit  heralds  of  the  desola- 
tion that  lies  beyond. 

Imagine,  then,  the  French  half  of  the  swathe 
extending  from  the  edge  of  the  civilian  world  to 
the  barbed-wire  entanglements  of  No  Man's 
Land.   Within  this  territory,  in  the  trenches,  in 

53 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  artillery  positions,  in  the  villages  where 
troops  are  quartered  (and  they  are  quartered  in 
every  village  of  the  swathe),  and  along  all  the 
principal  turns  and  corners  of  the  roads,  a  certain 
number  of  shells  fall  every  twenty-four  hours,  the 
number  of  shells  per  locality  increasing  as  one 
advances  toward  the  first  lines.  There  are  certain 
disputed  regions,  that  of  Verdun  in  particular, 
where  literally  the  whole  great  swathe  has  been 
pounded  to  pieces,  till  hardly  one  stone  of  a  vil- 
lage remains  on  another,  and  during  the  recent 
ofifensive  in  the  Somme  the  British  are  said  to 
have  systematically  wiped  out  every  village,  ham- 
let, and  road  behind  the  German  trenches  to  a 
depth  of  eighteen  miles.  Yet,  protected  from  rifle 
bullets  and  the  majority  of  shells  by  a  great 

wooded  hill,  the  inhabitants  of  M ,  one  mile 

from  the  lines  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  did  a  thriving 
business  selling  fruit  to  the  soldiers,  and  I  once 
saw  an  old  peasant  woman,  who  was  digging 
potatoes  in  her  garden  when  a  small  shell  burst 
about  two  hundred  feet  from  her,  shake  her  fist 
toward  the  German  lines,  mutter  something,  and 
plod  angrily  home  to  her  cellar.  There  are  rarely 
any  children  close  to  the  trenches,  but  in  villages 
that  are  only  occasionally  shelled,  the  school  is 

54 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

open,  and  the  class  hurries  to  the  cellar  at  the 
first  alarm. 

The  lieutenant  of  the  American  Section,  a 
young  Frenchman  who  spoke  English  not  only 
fluently,  but  also  with  distinction,  came  to  Nancy 
to  take  me  to  the  front.  It  was  a  clear,  sunny 
morning,  and  the  rumble  of  the  commercial  life  of 
Nancy,  somewhat  later  in  starting  than  our  own, 
was  just  beginning  to  be  heard.  Across  the  street 
from  the  breakfast-room  of  the  hotel,  a  young 
woman  wearing  a  little  black  cape  over  her  shoul- 
ders rolled  up  the  corrugated  iron  shutter  of  a 
confectioner's  shop  and  began  to  set  the  window 
with  the  popular  patriotic  candy  boxes,  aluminum 
models  of  a  "seventy-five"  shell  tied  round  with 
a  bow  of  narrow  tricolor  ribbon;  a  baker's  boy  in 
a  white  apron  and  blue  jumpers  went  by  carry- 
ing a  basket  of  bread  on  his  head;  and  from  the 
nearby  tobacconist's,  a  spruce  young  lieutenant 
dressed  in  a  black  uniform  emerged  lighting  a  cig- 
arette. At  nine  in  the  morning  I  was  contemplat- 
ing a  side  street  of  busy,  orderly,  sunlit  Nancy; 
that  night  I  was  in  a  cellar  seeking  refuge  from 
fire  shells. 

"  Please  give  me  all  your  military  papers,"  said 
my  oflScer.  I  handed  over  all  the  cards,  permits, 

55 


A  Vohmteer  Poilu 

and  licenses  that  had  been  given  me,  and  he  ex- 
amined them  closely. 

"  AUons,  let  us  go,"  he  said  to  his  chauffeur,  a 
young  soldier  wearing  the  insignia  of  the  motor- 
transportation  corps. 

"How  long  does  it  take  us  to  get  to  the  lines, 
mon  lieutenant?" 

"About  an  hour.  Our  headquarters  are  thirty 
kilometres  distant." 

The  big,  war-gray  Panhard  began  to  move.  I 
looked  round,  eager  to  notice  anything  that 
marked  our  transition  from  peace  to  war.  Be- 
yond the  Nancy,  built  in  the  Versailles  style  by 
the  exiled  Stanislaus,  lay  the  industrial  Nancy 
which  has  grown  up  since  the  development  of  the 
iron  mines  of  French  Lorraine  in  the  eighties. 
Through  this  ugly  huddle  we  passed  first:  there 
were  working  men  on  the  sidewalks,  gamins  in 
the  gutters,  —  nothing  to  remind  one  of  the  war. 

"Halt!" 

At  a  turn  in  the  road  near  the  outskirts  of  the 
city,  a  sentry,  a  small,  gray-haired  man,  had 
stepped  out  before  the  car.  From  the  door  of  a 
neighboring  wineshop,  a  hideous  old  woman,  her 
uncombed,  tawny  yellow  hair  messed  round  her 
coarse,  shiny  face,  came  out  to  look  at  us. 

56 


The  Gi'eat  Sivathe  of  the  Lines 

**  Your  papers,  please,"  said  a  red-faced,  middle- 
aged  sergeant  wearing  a  brown  corduroy  uniform, 
who,  walking  briskly  on  enormous  fat  legs,  had 
followed  the  sentry  out  into  the  street.  The  lieu- 
tenant produced  the  military  permit  to  travel  in 
the  army  zone  —  the  ordre  de  mouvement,  a 
printed  form  on  a  blue  sheet  about  the  size  of  a 
leaf  of  typewriter  paper. 

"Pass,"  said  the  sergeant,  and  saluted.  The 
sentry  retired  to  his  post  on  the  sidewalk.  At  the 
door  of  the  wineshop  the  woman  continued  to 
stare  at  us  with  an  animal  curiosity.  Possibly  our 
English-like  uniforms  had  attracted  her  attention; 
the  French  are  very  curious  about  les  Anglais. 
Over  the  roof  of  an  ugly  row  of  working  men's 
barracks,  built  of  mortar  and  trimmed  with  dingy 
brick,  came  the  uproar  of  a  great  industry,  the 
humming  clang  of  saws,  the  ringing  of  iron  on 
iron,  and  the  heart-beat  thump  of  a  great  hammer 
that  shook  the  earth.  In  a  vast,  detached  build- 
ing five  great  furnaces  were  crowned  with  tufts 
of  pinkish  fire,  workmen  were  crossing  the  cindery 
yard  dragging  little  carts  and  long  strips  of  iron, 
and  a  long  line  of  open  freight  cars  was  being  emp- 
tied of  coal. 

"They  are  making  shells,"  said  the  lieutenant 

57 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

in  the  tone  that  he  might  have  said,  "They  are 
making  candy." 

Another  sentry  held  us  up  at  the  bridge  where 
the  road  crosses  the  Moselle  as  it  issues  from  the 
highlands  to  the  southwest. 

Beyond  the  bridge,  running  almost  directly 
north  to  Metz,  lay  the  historic  valley  of  the  Mo- 
selle. Great,  bare  hills,  varying  between  seven 
hundred  and  a  thousand  feet  in  height,  and  often 
carved  by  erosion  into  strange,  high  triangles 
and  abrupt  mesas,  formed  the  valley  wall.  The 
ground  color  of  the  hills  was  a  warm  buff-brown 
with  a  good  deal  of  iron-red  in  it,  and  the  sky 
above  was  of  a  light,  friendly  blue.  A  strange, 
Egyptian  emerald  of  new  wheat,  a  certain  deep 
cobalt  of  cloud  shadows,  and  a  ruddy  brownness  of 
field  and  moor  are  the  colors  of  Lorraine.  Here 
and  there,  on  the  meadows  of  the  river  and  the 
steep  flanks  of  the  hills,  were  ancient,  red-roofed 
villages.  Across  the  autumnal  fields  the  smoke 
and  flame  of  squalid  Pompey  loomed  strangely. 

There  were  signs  of  the  war  at  Marbache,  four- 
teen kilometres  from  Nancy,  slight  signs,  to  be 
sure,  but  good  ones  —  the  presence  of  a  military 
smithy  for  the  repair  of  army  wagons,  several  of 
which  stood  by  on  rusty  wheels,  and  a  view  of 

58 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

some  twenty  or  thirty  artillery  caissons  parked 

under  the  trees.   But  it  was  at  B ,  sixteen 

kilometres  from  Nancy,  and  sixteen  from  the 
lines,  that  I  first  felt  the  imminence  of  the  war. 
The  morning  train  from  Nancy  had  just  stopped, 
to  go  no  farther  for  fear  of  shells,  and  beyond  the 
station  the  tracks  of  the  once  busy  Nancy-Metz 
railroad  advanced,  rusty,  unused,  and  overgrown 
with  grass,  into  the  danger  zone.  Far  behind  now 
lay  civilian  Pompey,  and  Marbache  shared  by 

soldiers  and  civilians.    B was  distinctly  a 

village  of  the  soldiery.  The  little  hamlet,  now  the 
junction  where  the  wagon- trains  supplying  the 
soldiery  meet  the  great  artery  of  the  railroad,  was 
built  on  the  banks  of  a  canal  above  the  river.  The 
color  of  these  villages  in  Lorraine  is  rather  lovely, 
for  the  walls  of  the  houses,  built  of  the  local  buff- 
yellow  stone  and  ferrous  sand,  are  of  a  warm, 
brown  tone  that  goes  well  with  the  roofs  of  claret- 
red  tile  and  the  brown  landscape,  A  glorious  sky 
of  silvery  white  cloud  masses,  pierced  with  sun- 
light and  islanded  with  soft  blue,  shone  over  the 
soldier  village.  There  were  no  combatants  in  it 
when  we  passed  through,  only  the  old  poilus  who 
drove  the  wagons  to  the  trenches  and  the  army 
hostlers  who  looked  after  the  animals.    There 

59 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

were  pictures  of  soldier  grooms  leading  horses 
down  a  narrow,  slimy  street  between  brown,  mud- 
spattered  walls  to  a  drinking-trough;  of  horses 
lined  up  along  a  house  wall  being  briskly  curry- 
combed  by  big,  thick-set  fellows  in  blousy  white 
overalls  and  blue  fatigue  caps;  and  of  doors  of 
stables  opening  on  the  road  showing  a  bedding  of 
brown  straw  on  the  earthen  floor.  There  was  a 
certain  stench,  too,  the  smell  of  horse-fouled  mud 
that  mixed  with  that  odor  I  later  was  able  to 
classify  as  the  smell  of  war.  For  the  war  has  a 
smell  that  clings  to  everything  miltary,  fills  the 
troop-trains,  hospitals,  and  cantonments,  and  sat- 
urates one's  own  clothing,  a  smell  compounded  of 
horse,  chemicals,  sweat,  mud,  dirt,  and  human 
beings.  At  the  guarded  exit  of  the  village  to  the 
shell  zone  was  a  little  military  cemetery  in  which 
rows  of  wooden  crosses  stood  with  the  regularity 
of  pins  in  a  paper. 

Two  kilometres  farther  on,  at  Dieulouard,  we 
drew  into  the  shell  zone.  A  cottage  had  been 
struck  the  day  before,  and  the  shell,  arriving  by 
the  roof,  had  blown  part  of  the  front  wall  out  into 
the  street.  In  the  facade  of  the  house,  to  the  left 
of  a  door  hanging  crazily  on  its  hinges,  an  irregu- 
lar oval  hole,  large  enough  to  drive  a  motor-car 
60 


The  Gi'eat  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

through,  rose  from  the  ground  and  came  to  a  point 
just  below  the  overhang  of  the  roof.  The  edges  of 
the  broken  stone  were  clean  and  new  in  contrast 
to  the  time-soiled  outer  wall  of  the  dwelling. 

A  pile  of  this  clean  stone  lay  on  the  ground  at 
the  outer  opening  of  the  orifice,  mixed  with  frag- 
ments of  red  tiles. 

"They  killed  two  there  yesterday,"  said  the 
lieutenant,  pointing  out  the  debris. 

The  village,  a  farming  hamlet  transformed  by 
the  vicinity  of  a  great  foundry  into  something 
neither  a  village  nor  a  town,  was  full  of  soldiers; 
there  were  soldiers  in  the  streets,  soldiers  stand- 
ing in  doorways,  soldiers  cooking  over  wood  fires, 
soldiers  everywhere.  And  looking  at  the  muddy 
village-town  full  of  men  in  uniforms  of  blue,  old 
uniforms  of  blue,  muddy  uniforms  of  blue,  in  blue 
that  was  blue-gray  and  blue-green  from  wear 
and  exposure  to  the  weather,  I  realized  that  the 
old  days  of  beautiful,  half-barbaric  uniforms  were 
gone  forever,  and  that,  in  place  of  the  old  roman- 
tic war  of  cavalry  charges  and  great  battles  in  the 
open,  a  new,  more  terrible  war  had  been  created, 
a  war  that  had  not  the  chivalric  externals  of  the 
old. 

After  Dieulouard  began  the  swathe  of  stillness. 
6i 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

Following  the  western  bank  of  the  canal  of  the 
Moselle  the  road  made  a  great  curve  round  the 
base  of  a  hill  descending  to  the  river,  and  then 
mounted  a  little  spur  of  the  valley  wall.  Beyond 
the  spur  the  road  went  through  lonely  fields,  in 
which  were  deserted  farmhouses  surrounded  by 
acres  of  neglected  vines,  now  rank  and  Medusa- 
like in  their  weedy  profusion.  Every  once  in  a 
while,  along  a  rise,  stood  great  burlap  screens  so 
arranged  one  behind  the  other  as  to  give  the  efiFect 
of  a  continuous  line  when  seen  from  a  certain 
angle. 

"What  are  those  for?" 

*'To  hide  the  road  from  the  Germans.  Do  you 
see  that  little  village  down  there  on  the  crest? 
The  Boches  have  an  observatory  there,  and  shell 
the  road  whenever  they  see  anything  worth  shell- 
ing." 

A  strange  stillness  pervaded  the  air;  not  a  still- 
ness of  death  and  decay,  but  the  stillness  of  life 
that  listens.  The  sun  continued  to  shine  on  the 
brown  moorland  hills  across  the  gray-green  river, 
the  world  was  quite  the  same,  yet  one  sensed 
that  something  had  changed.  A  village  lay  ahead 
of  us,  disfigured  by  random  shells  and  half  de- 
serted. Beyond  the  still,  shell-spattered  houses, 
62 


IIURLAP   SCREENS   TO    HIDE   TliE    ROAD    1- RuM    THE   GERMANS 


CARRYING   DOWN   THE   DEAD   AFTER  THE   ATTACK 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

a  great  wood  rose,  about  a  mile  and  a  half  away, 
on  a  ridge  that  stood  boldly  against  the  sky.  Run- 
ning from  the  edge  of  the  trees  down  across  an 
open  slope  to  the  river  was  a  brownish  line  that 
stood  in  a  little  contrast  to  the  yellower  grass. 
Suddenly,  there  slowly  rose  from  this  line  a  great 
puff  of  grayish-black  smoke  which  melted  away 
in  the  clear,  autumnal  air. 

"See,"  said  our  lieutenant  calmly,  with  no 
more  emotion  than  he  would  have  shown  at  a  bon- 
fire —  "  those  are  the  German  trenches.  We  have 
just  fired  a  shell  into  them." 

Two  minutes  more  took  us  into  the  dead,  de- 
serted city  of  Pont-a-Mousson.  The  road  was 
now  everywhere  screened  carefully  with  lengths  of 
light-brown  burlap,  and  there  was  not  a  single 
house  that  did  not  bear  witness  to  the  power  of  a 
shell.  The  sense  of  "the  front"  began  to  possess 
me,  never  to  go,  the  sense  of  being  in  the  vicinity 
of  a  tremendous  power.  A  ruined  village,  or  a 
deserted  town  actually  on  the  front  does  not  bring 
to  mind  any  impression  of  decay,  for  the  intellect 
tends  rather  to  consider  the  means  by  which  the 
destruction  has  been  accomplished.  One  sees  vil- 
lages of  the  swathes  so  completely  blown  to  pieces 
that  they  are  literally  nothing  but  earthy  mounds 

63 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

of  rubbish,  and  seeing  them  thus,  in  a  plain  still 
fiercely  disputed  night  and  day  between  one's 
own  side  and  the  invisible  enemy,  the  mind  feels 
itself  in  the  presence  of  force,  titanic,  secret,  and 
hostile. 

Beyond  Pont-a-Mousson  the  road  led  directly 
to  the  trenches  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  less  than  half 
a  mile  away.  But  the  disputed  trenches  were  hid- 
den behind  the  trees,  and  I  could  not  see  them. 
Through  the  silence  of  the  deserted  town  sounded 
the  muffled  boom  of  shells  and  trench  engines 
bursting  in  the  wood  beyond,  and  every  now  and 
then  clouds  of  gray-black  smoke  from  the  explo- 
sion would  rise  above  the  brown  leaves  of  the 
ash  trees.  The  smoke  of  these  explosions  rose 
straight  upwards  in  a  foggy  column,  such  as  a 
locomotive  might  make  if,  halted  on  its  tracks 
somewhere  in  the  wood,  it  had  put  coal  on  its  fires. 

With  the  next  day  I  began  my  service  at  the 
trenches,  but  the  war  began  for  me  that  very 
night. 

A  room  in  a  bourgeois  flat  on  the  third  floor  of 
a  deserted  apartment  house  had  been  assigned  me. 
It  was  nine  o'clock,  and  I  was  getting  ready  to 
roll  up  in  my  blankets  and  go  to  sleep.  Beneath 
the  starlit  heavens  the  street  below  was  black  as 

64 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

pitch  save  when  a  trench  light,  floating  serenely 
down  the  sky,  illuminated  with  its  green-white 
glow  the  curving  road  and  the  line  of  dark,  aban- 
doned, half-ruinous  villas.  There  was  not  a  sound 
to  be  heard  outside  of  an  occasional  rifle  shot  in 
the  trenches,  sounding  for  all  the  world  like  the 
cUck  of  giant  croquet  balls.  I  went  round  to  the 
rear  of  the  house  and  looked  out  of  the  kitchen 
windows  to  the  lines.  A  Uttle  action,  some  quarrel 
of  sentries,  perhaps,  was  going  on  behind  the  trees, 
just  where  the  wooded  ridge  sloped  to  the  river. 
Trench  light  after  trench  light  rose,  showing  the 
disused  railroad  track  running  across  the  un- 
harvested  fields.  Gleaming  palely  through  the 
French  window  at  which  I  was  standing,  the  radi- 
ance revealed  the  deserted  kitchen,  the  rusty 
stove,  the  dusty  pans,  and  the  tarnished  water- 
tap  above  the  stone  sink.  The  hard,  wooden 
crash  of  grenades  broke  upon  my  ears. 

My  own  room  was  lit  by  the  yellow  flame  of  a 
solitary  candle,  rising,  untroubled  by  the  slightest 
breath  of  wind,  straight  into  the  air.  A  large  rug 
of  old-rose  covered  the  floor,  an  old-rose  velvet 
canopy  draped  a  long  table,  hanging  down  at  the 
corners  in  straight,  heavy  creases,  and  the  wall- 
paper was  a  golden  yellow  with  faint  stripes  of 

65 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

silvery-gray  glaze.  By  the  side  of  the  wooden 
bed  stood  a  high  cabinet  holding  about  fifty  terra- 
cotta and  porcelain  figurines,  shiny  shepherdesses 
with  shiny  pink  cheeks,  Louis  XV  peasants  with 
rakes  on  their  shoulders,  and  three  little  dogs 
made  of  a  material  the  color  of  cocoa.  The  gem 
of  the  collection  was  an  eighteenth-century  porce- 
lain of  a  youth  and  a  maid  sitting  on  opposite 
sides  of  a  curved  bench  over  whose  center  rose  a 
blossoming  bush.  The  youth,  dressed  in  black, 
and  wearing  yellow  stockings,  looked  with  an 
amorous  smile  at  the  girl  in  her  gorgeous  dress  of 
flowering  brocade. 

A  marbly-white  fireplace  stood  in  the  corner, 
overhung  by  a  great  Louis  XV  mirror  with  a  gilt 
frame  of  rich,  voluptuous  curves.  On  the  mantel 
lay  a  scarf  of  old-rose  velvet  smelling  decidedly 
musty.  Alone,  apart,  upon  this  mantel,  as  an 
altar,  stood  a  colored  plaster  bust  of  Jeanne  d'Arc, 
showing  her  in  the  beauty  of  her  winsome  youth. 
The  pale,  girlish  face  dominated  the  shadowy 
room  with  its  dreamy,  innocent  loveliness. 

There  came  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  so  still  was 

the  town'  and  the  house  that  the  knock  had  the 

effect  of  something  dramatic  and  portentous.   A 

big  man,  with  bulging,  pink  cheeks,  a  large,  chest- 

66 


The  Great  Sivathe  of  the  Lines 

nut  mustache,  and  brown  eyes  full  of  philosophic 

curiosity,  stood  in  the  doorway.    The  uniform 

that  he  was  wearing  was    unusually  neat  and 

clean. 

;   "So  you  are  the  American  I  am  to  have  as 

neighbor,"  said  he. 

"Yes,"  I  replied. 

"  I  am  the  caporal  in  charge  of  the  depot  of  the 
engineers  in  the  cellar,"  continued  my  visitor, 
"and  I  thought  I'd  come  in  and  see  how  you 
were." 

I  invited  him  to  enter. 

"  Do  you  find  yourself  comfortable  here,  son?  " 

"Yes.  I  consider  myself  privileged  to  have  the 
use  of  the  room.   Have  a  cigarette?  " 

■"Are  these  American  cigarettes?" 

"Yes." 

"Your  American  tobacco  is  fine,  son.  But  in 
America  everybody  is  a  millionaire  and  has  the 
best  of  everything  —  is  n't  that  so?  I  should  like 
to  go  to  America." 

"A  Frenchman  is  never  happy  out  of  France." 
^Comfortably  seated  in  a  big,  ugly  chair,  he 
puffed  his  cigarette  and  meditated. 

"Perhaps  you  are  right,"  he  admitted.  "We 
Frenchmen  love  the  good  things,  and  think  we  can 

67 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

get  them  in  France  better  than  anywhere  else. 
The  solid  satisfactions  of  life  —  good  wine  — 
good  cheese."  He  paused.  "You  see,  son,  all 
that  (tout  fa)  is  an  affair  of  mine  —  in  civilian  life 
(dans  le  civil)  I  am  a  grocer  at  Macon  in  Bour- 
gogne." 

For  a  little  while  we  talked  of  Burgundy,  which 
I  had  often  visited  in  my  student  days  at  Lyons. 
There  came  another  pause,  and  the  Burgundian 
said: — 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  of  this  big  racket 
(ce  grand  fracas)?" 

"I  have  not  seen  enough  of  it  to  say." 

"  Well,  I  think  you  are  going  to  get  a  taste  of  it 
to-night.  I  heard  our  artillery  men  (nos  artiflots) 
early  this  morning  firing  their  long-range  cannon, 
and  every  time  they  do  that  the  Boches  throw 
shells  into  Pont-a-Mousson.  I  have  been  expect- 
ing an  answer  all  day.  If  they  start  in  to-night, 
get  up  and  come  down  cellar,  son.  This  house  was 
struck  by  a  shell  two  weeks  ago." 

The  shadowy,  candlelit  room  and  the  dark  city 
became  at  his  words  more  mysterious  and  hostile. 
The  atmosphere  seemed  pervaded  by  some  ob- 
scure, endless,  dreadful  threat.  It  was  getting 
toward  ten  o'clock. 

68 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

"Is  this  the  only  room  you  have?  I  have  never 
been  in  this  suite." 

"No,  there  is  another  room.  Would  you  like 
to  see  it?" 

He  followed  me  into  a  small  chamber  from 
which  everything  had  been  stripped  except  a 
bedside  table,  a  chair,  and  a  crayon  portrait  of  a 
woman.  The  picture,  slightly  tinted  with  flesh 
color,  was  that  of  a  bourgeoise  on  the  threshold 
of  the  fifties,  and  the  still  candle-flame  brought 
out  in  distinct  relief  the  heavy,  obese  countenance, 
the  hair  curled  in  artificial  ringlets,  and  the  gold 
crucifix  which  she  wore  on  her  large  bosom.  The 
Burgundian's  attention  centered  on  this  picture, 
which  he  examined  with  the  air  of  a  connoisseur 
of  female  beauty. 

''Lord,  how  ugly  she  is!"  he  exclaimed.  "She 
might  well  have  stayed.  Such  an  old  dragon 
would  have  no  reason  to  fear  the  Boches."  And 
he  laughed  heartily  from  his  rich  lips  and  pulled 
his  mustache. 

"Don't  forget  to  hurry  to  the  cellar,  son,"  he 
called  as  he  went  away. 

At  his  departure  the  lonely  night  closed  in  on 
me  again.  Far,  far  away  sounded  the  booming  of 
cannon. 

69 


A  Volmiteer  Poilu 

I  am  a  light  sleeper,  and  the  arrival  of  the  first 
shell  awakened  me.  Kicking  oS  my  blankets,  I 
sat  up  in  bed  just  in  time  to  catch  the  swift  ebb 
of  a  heavy  concussion.  A  piece  of  glass,  dislodged 
from  a  broken  pane  by  the  tremor,  fell  in  a  treble 
tinkle  to  the  floor.  For  a  minute  or  two  there  was 
a  full,  heavy  silence,  and  then  several  objects 
rolled  down  the  roof  and  fell  over  the  gutters  into 
the  street.  It  sounded  as  if  some  one  had  emptied 
a  hodful  of  coal  onto  the  house-roof  from  the 
height  of  the  clouds.  Another  silence  followed. 
Suddenly  it  was  broken  by  a  swift,  complete 
sound,  a  heavy  boom-roar,  and  on  the  heels  of 
this  noise  came  a  throbbing,  whistling  sigh  that, 
at  first  faint  as  the  sound  of  ocean  on  a  dis- 
tant beach,  increased  with  incredible  speed  to  a 
whistling  swish,  ending  in  a  HISH  of  tremendous 
volume  and  a  roaring,  grinding  burst.  The  sound 
of  a  great  shell  is  never  a  pure  hang;  one  hears, 
rather,  the  end  of  the  arriving  HISH,  the  explo- 
sion, and  the  tearing  disintegration  of  the  thick 
wall  of  iron  in  one  grinding  hammer-blow  of  ter- 
rific violence.  On  the  heels  of  this  second  shell 
came  voices  in  the  dark  street,  and  the  rosy  glow 
of  fire  from  somewhere  behind.  More  lumps, 
fragments  of  shell  that  had  been  shot  into  the  air 

70. 


The  Great  Swathe  of  the  Lines 

by  the  explosion,  rained  down  upon  the  roof.  I 
got  up  and  went  to  the  kitchen  window.  A  house 
on  one  of  the  silent  streets  between  the  city  and 
the  lines  was  on  fire,  great  volumes  of  smoke 
were  rolling  off  into  the  starlit  night,  and  voices 
were  heard  all  about  murmuring  in  the  shadows. 
I  hurried  on  my  clothes  and  went  down  to  the 
cellar. 

The  light  of  two  candles  hanging  from  a  shelf 
in  loops  of  wire  revealed  a  clean,  high  cellar;  a 
mess  of  straw  was  strewn  along  one  wall,  and  a 
stack  of  shovels  and  picks,  some  of  them  wrapped 
in  paper,  was  banked  against  the  other.  In  the 
straw  lay  three  oldish  men,  fully  clad  in  the  dark- 
blue  uniform  which  in  old  times  had  signaled  the 
Engineer  Corps;  one  dozed  with  his  head  on  his 
arm,  the  other  two  were  stretched  out  flat  in  the 
mysterious  grossness  of  sleep.  A  door  from  the 
cellar  to  a  sunken  garden  was  open,  and  through 
this  opening  streamed  the  intense  radiance  of  the 
rising  fire.  At  the  opening  stood  three  men,  my 
visitor  of  the  evening,  a  little,  wrinkled  man  with 
Napoleon  III  whiskers  and  imperial,  and  an  old, 
dwarfish  fellow  with  a  short  neck,  a  bullet  head, 
and  close-clipped  hair.  Catching  sight  of  me,  the 
Burgundian  said:  — 

71 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"Well,  son,  you  see  it  is  knocking  (ga  tape)  ce 
soir." 

Hearing  another  shell,  he  slammed  the  door, 
and  stepped  to  the  right  behind  the  stone  wall  of 
the  cellar. 

"Very  bad,"  croaked  the  dwarf.  "The  Boches 
are  throwing  fire  shells." 

"And  they  will  fire  shrapnel  at  the  poor 
bougres  who  have  to  put  out  the  fires,"  said  the 
little  man  with  the  imperial. 

"So  they  will,  those  knaves,"  croaked  the 
dwarf  in  a  voice  entirely  free  from  any  emotion. 

*'That  fire  must  be  down  on  the  Boulevard 
Ney,"  said  the  bearded  man. 

"There  is  another  beginning  just  to  the  right," 
said  the  Burgundian  in  the  tone  of  one  retailing 
interesting  but  hardly  useful  information. 

"There  will  be  others,"  croaked  the  dwarf,  who, 
leaning  against  the  cellar  wall,  was  trying  to  roll 
a  cigarette  with  big,  square,  fumbling  fingers. 
And  looking  at  a  big,  gray-haired  man  in  the  hay, 
who  had  turned  over  and  was  beginning  to  snore, 
he  added:  "Look  at  the  new  man.  He  sleeps  well, 
that  fellow"  (ce  type  la). 

"He  looks  like  a  Breton,"  said  the  man  with 
the  imperial. 

72 


The  Great  Szvathe  of  the  Lines 

"An  Auvergnat  —  an  Auvergnat,"  replied  the 
dwarf  in  a  tone  that  was  meant  to  be  final. 

The  soldier,  who  had  just  been  sent  down  from 
Paris  to  take  the  place  of  another  recently  in- 
vaUded  home,  snored  on,  unconscious  of  our 
scrutiny.  The  light  from  the  fires  outside  cast 
a  rosy  glow  on  his  weather-worn  features  and 
sparse,  silvery  hair.  His  own  curiosity  stirred, 
the  corporal  looked  at  his  list. 

"He  came  from  Lyons,"  he  announced.  "His 
name  is  Alphonse  Reboulet." 

"I  am  glad  he  is  not  an  Auvergnat,"  growled 
the  dwarf.   "We  should  have  all  had  fleas." 

A  shell  burst  very  near,  and  a  bitter  odor  of  ex- 
plosives came  swirling  through  the  doorway.  A 
fragment  of  the  shell  casing  struck  a  window 
above  us,  and  a  large  piece  of  glass  fell  by  the 
doorway  and  broke  into  splinters.  The  first  fire 
was  dying  down,  but  two  others  were  burning 
briskly.  The  soldiers  waited  for  the  end  of  the 
bombardment,  as  they  might  have  waited  for  the 
end  of  a  thunderstorm. 

"  Tiens  —  here  comes  the  shrapnel,"  exclaimed 
the  Burgundian.  And  he  slammed  the  door 
swiftly. 

A  high,  clear  whistle  cleaved  the  flame-lit  sky, 

73 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

and  about  thirty  small  shrapnel  shells  burst  be- 
yond us. 

"They  try  to  prevent  any  one  putting  out  the 
fires,"  said  the  Burgundian  confidentially.  "They 
get  the  range  from  the  light  of  the  flames." 

Another  dreadful  rafale  (voUey)  of  shrapnel, 
at  the  rate  of  ten  or  fifteen  a  minute,  came  speed- 
ing from  the  German  lines. 

"They  are  firing  on  the  other  house,  now." 

"Who  puts  out  the  fires?" 

"The  territorials  who  police  and  clean  up  the 
town.   Some  of  them  live  two  doors  below." 

The  Burgundian  pointed  down  the  garden  to  a 
door  opening,  like  our  own,  on  to  an  area  below  the 
level  of  the  street.  Suddenly,  a  gate  opening  on  a 
back  lane  swung  back,  and  two  soldiers  entered, 
one  carrying  the  feet  and  the  other  the  shoulders 
of  a  third.  The  body  hung  clumsily  between  them 
like  a  piece  of  old  sacking. 

"Tiens  —  some  one  is  wounded,"  said  the  Bur- 
gundian.  "  Go,  thou,  Badel,  and  see  who  it  is." 

The  dwarf  plodded  off  obediently. 

"It  is  Palester,"  he  announced  on  his  return, 
"the  type  that  had  the  swollen  jaw  last  month." 

"What's  the  matter  with  hun?" 

"He's  been  killed." 


CHAPTER  IV 

LA  FORET  DE   BOIS-LE-PRETRE 

Beginning  at  the  right  bank  of  the  Meuse,  a  vast 
plateau  of  bare,  desolate  moorland  sweeps  east- 
ward to  the  Moselle,  and  descends  to  the  river  in 
a  nrnnber  of  great,  wooded  ridges  perpendicular 
to  the  northward-flowing  stream.  The  town  of 
Pont-a-Mousson  lies  an  apron  of  meadowland 
spread  between  two  of  these  ridges,  the  ridge  of 
Puvenelle  and  the  ridge  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre. 
The  latter  is  the  highest  of  all  the  spurs  of  the 
valley.  Rising  from  the  river  about  half  a  mile  to 
the  north  of  the  city,  it  ascends  swiftly  to  the  level 
of  the  plateau,  and  was  seen  from  our  headquar- 
ters as  a  long,  wooded  ridge  blocking  the  sky-line 
to  the  northwest.  The  hamlet  of  Maidieres,  in 
which  our  headquarters  were  located,  lies  just  at 
the  foot  of  Puvenelle,  at  a  point  where  the  amphi- 
theater of  Pont-a-Mousson,  crowding  between 
the  two  ridges,  becomes  a  steep-walled  valley 
sharply  tilted  to  the  west. 

The  Bois-le-Pretre  dominated  at  once  the  land- 
scape and  our  minds.   Its  existence  was  the  one 

75 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

great  fact  in  the  lives  of  some  fifty  thousand 
Frenchmen,  Germans,  and  a  handful  of  exiled 
Americans;  it  had  dominated  and  ended  the  lives 
of  the  dead;  it  would  dominate  the  imagination 
of  the  future.  Yet,  looking  across  the  brown  walls 
and  claret  roofs  of  the  hamlet  of  Maidieres,  there 
was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  a  grassy  slope,  open 
fields,  a  reddish  ribbon  of  road,  a  wreck  of  a  villa 
burned  by  a  fire  shell,  and  a  wood.  The  autumn 
had  turned  the  leaves  of  the  trees,  seemingly 
without  exception,  to  a  leathery  broAvn,  and  in 
almost  all  lights  the  trunks  of  the  trees  were  a 
cold,  purplish  slate.  Such  was  the  forest  which, 
battle-areas  excepted,  has  cost  more  lives  than 
any  other  point  along  the  line.  The  wood  had 
been  contested  trench  by  trench,  literally  foot  by 
foot.  It  was  at  once  the  key  to  the  Saint-Mihiel 
salient  and  the  city  of  Metz. 

The  Saint-Mihiel  salient  —  "  the  hernia,"  as 
the  French  call  it  —  begins  at  the  Bois-le-Pretre. 
Pivoting  on  The  Wood,  the  lines  turn  sharply 
inland,  cross  the  desolate  plateau  of  La  Woevre, 
attain  the  Meuse  at  Saint-Mihiel,  turn  again,  and 
ascend  the  river  to  the  Verdunois.  The  salient, 
as  dangerous  for  the  Germans  as  it  is  troublesome 
for  the  French,  represents  the  limit  of  a  German 
76 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

offensive  directed  against  Toul  in  October,  1914. 
That  the  French  retreated  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  plateau  was  insufficiently  protected, 
many  of  the  regiments  having  been  rushed  north 
to  the  great  battle  then  raging  on  the  Aisne. 

Only  one  railroad  center  lies  in  the  territory  of 
the  salient,  Thiaucourt  in  Woevre.  This  pleasant 
little  moorland  town,  locally  famous  for  its  wine, 
is  connected  with  Metz  by  two  single-track  rail- 
road lines,  one  coming  via  Conflans,  and  the  other 
by  Arnaville  on  the  Moselle.  At  Vilcey-sur-Mad, 
these  lines  unite,  and  follow  to  Thiaucourt  the 
only  practicable  railroad  route,  the  valley  of  the 
Rupt  (brook)  de  Mad. 

Thus  the  domination  of  Thiaucourt,  or  the 
valley  of  the  Rupt  de  Mad,  by  French  artillery 
would  break  the  railroad  communications  between 
the  troops  keeping  the  salient  and  their  base  of 
supplies,  Metz.  And  the  fate  of  Metz  itself  hangs 
on  the  control  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre. 

Metz  is  the  heart  of  the  German  organization 
on  the  western  front :  the  railroad  center,  the  sup- 
ply station,  the  troop  depot.  A  blow  at  Metz 
would  affect  the  security  of  every  German  soldier 
between  Alsace  and  the  Belgian  frontier.  But  if 
the  French  can  drive  the  Germans  out  of  the  Bois- 

77 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

le-Pretre  and  establish  big  howitzers  on  the  crest 
the  Germans  are  still  holding,  there  will  soon  be 
no  more  Metz.  The  French  guns  will  destroy  the 
city  as  the  German  cannon  destroyed  Verdun, 

When  the  Germans,  therefore,  retired  to  the 
trenches  after  the  battles  of  September  and  Octo- 
ber, 1 9 14,  they  took  to  the  ground  on  the  heights 
of  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  a  terrain  far  enough  ahead 
of  Thiaucourt  and  Metz  to  preserve  these  centers 
from  the  danger  of  being  shelled.  On  the  crest  of 
the  highest  ridge  along  the  valley,  admirably  am- 
bushed in  a  thick  forest,  they  waited  for  the  com- 
ing of  the  French.   And  the  French  came. 

They  came,  young  and  old,  slum-dweller  and 
country  schoolmaster,  rich  young  noble  and  Cor- 
sican  peasant,  to  the  storming  of  the  wood,  up- 
held by  one  vision,  the  unbroken,  grassy  slope 
that  stretched  from  behind  the  German  lines  to 
the  town  of  Thiaucourt.  In  the  trenches  behind 
the  slaty  trunks  of  the  great  ash  trees.  Bavarian 
peasants,  Saxons,  and  round-headed  Wiirttem- 
burgers,  the  olive-green,  jack-booted  Boches, 
awaited  their  coming,  determined  to  hold  the 
wood,  the  salient,  and  the  city. 

A  year  later  the  Bois-le-Pretre  (the  Priest 
Wood),  with  its  perfume  of  ecclesiastical  names 

78 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

that  reminds  one  of  the  odor  of  incense  in  an  old 
church,  had  become  the  Bois  de  la  Mort  (the 
Wood  of  Death). 

The  house  in  which  our  bureau  was  located  was 
once  the  summer  residence  of  a  rich  ironmaster 
who  had  fled  to  Paris  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
If  there  is  an  architectural  style  of  German  origin 
known  as  the  "Neo-Classic,"  which  affects  large, 
windowless  spaces  framed  in  pilasters  of  tile,  and 
decorations  and  insets  of  omelet-yellow  and 
bottle-green  glazed  brick,  "Wisteria  Villa"  is  of 
that  school.  It  stood  behind  a  high  wall  of  iron 
spikes  on  the  road  leading  from  Maidieres  to  the 
trenches,  a  high,  Germano-Pompeian  country 
house,  topped  by  a  roof  rich  in  angles,  absurd 
windows,  and  unexpected  gables.  There  are  huge, 
square,  French-roofed  houses  in  New  England 
villages  built  by  local  richesstmes  of  Grant's  time, 
and  stUl  called  by  neighbors  "the  Jinks  place" 
or  the  "Levi  Gates  place";  Wisteria  Villa  had 
something  of  the  same  social  relation  to  the  com- 
mune of  Maidieres.  Grotesque  and  ugly,  it  was 
not  to  be  despised;  it  had  character  in  its  way. 

Our  social  center  was  the  dining-room  of  the 
villa.  Exclusive  of  the  kitchen  range,  it  boasted 

79 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  only  stove  in  the  house,  a  queerly  shaped 
"Salamandre,"  a  kind  of  FrankUn  stove  with 
mica  doors.  The  walls  were  papered  an  ugly 
chocolate  brown  with  a  good  deal  of  red  in  it,  and 
the  borders,  doors,  and  fireplace  frame  were 
stained  a  color  trembling  between  mission  green 
and  oak  brown.  The  room  was  rectangular  and 
too  high  for  its  width.  There  were  pictures.  On 
each  side  of  the  fireplace,  profiles  toward  the 
chimney,  hung  concave  plaques  of  Dutch  girls. 
To  the  left  of  the  door  was  a  yellowed  etching  of 
the  tower  of  the  chiteau  of  Heidelberg,  and  to  the 
right  a  very  small  oil  painting,  in  an  ornate  gilt 
frame  three  inches  deep,  of  a  beach  by  moonlight. 
About  two  or  three  hundred  books,  bound  in 
boards  and  red  leather,  stood  behind  the  cracked 
glass  of  a  bookcase  in  the  corner;  they  were  very 
"jeune  fiUe,"  and  only  the  romances  of  Georges 
Ohnet  appeared  to  have  been  read.  The  thou- 
sand cupboards  of  the  house  were  full  of  dusty 
knickknacks,  old  umbrellas,  hats,  account-books, 
and  huge  boxes  holding  the  debris  of  sets  of  check- 
ers, dominoes,  and  ivory  chessmen.  An  enlarged 
photograph  of  the  family  hung  on  the  walls  of  a 
bedroom;  it  had  been  taken  at  somebody's  mar- 
riage, and  showed  the  group  standing  on  the  front 
80 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

steps,  the  same  steps  that  were  later  to  be  blown 
to  pieces  by  a  shell.  One  saw  the  bride,  the  groom, 
and  about  twenty  relatives,  including  a  boy  in 
short  trousers,  a  wide,  white  collar,  and  an  old- 
fashioned,  fluffy  bow  tie.  Anxious  to  be  included 
in  the  picture,  the  driver  of  the  bridal  barouche  has 
craned  his  neck  forward.  On  the  evidence  of  the 
costumes,  the  picture  had  been  taken  about  1902. 

Our  bureau  in  the  cellar  of  Wisteria  Villa  was 
connected  directly  with  the  trenches.  When  a 
man  had  been  wounded,  he  was  carried  to  the 
poste  de  secours  in  the  rear  lines,  and  it  was  our 
duty  to  go  to  this  trench  post  and  carry  the  pa- 
tient to  the  hospital  at  the  nearest  rail-head.  The 
bureau  of  the  Section  was  in  charge  of  two  French- 
men who  shared  the  labor  of  attending  to  the  tele- 
phone and  keeping  the  books. 

A  hundred  yards  beyond  Wisteria  Villa,  at  a 
certain  corner,  the  principal  road  to  the  trenches 
divided  into  three  branches,  and  in  order  to  inter- 
fere as  much  as  possible  with  communications, 
the  Germans  daily  shelled  this  strategic  point.  A 
comrade  and  I  had  the  curiosity  to  keep  an  exact 
record  of  a  week's  shelling.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  corner  was  screened  from  the  Ger- 
mans, who  fired  casually  in  the  hope  of  hitting 
81 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

something  and  annoying  the  French.  The  can- 
nons shelHng  the  corner  were  usually  "seventy- 
sevens,"  the  German  quick-firing  pieces  that  cor- 
respond to  the  French  "seventy-fives." 

Monday,  ten  shells  at  6.30,  two  at  7.10,  five  at 
11.28,  twenty  at  intervals  between  2.15  and  2.45, 
a  swift  rafale  of  some  sixteen  at  4.12,  another 
rafale  of  twenty  at  8,  and  occasional  shells  be- 
tween 9  and  midnight. 

Tuesday,  two  big  shells  at  mid-day. 

Wednesday,  rafales  at  9.14,  11,  2.18,  4.30,  and 
6.20. 

Thursday  —  no  shells. 

Friday,  twelve  at  intervals  between  10.16  and 
12.20.  Solitary  big  shell  at  1.05.  Another  big 
shell  at  3.  Some  fifteen  stray  shells  between  5 
and  midnight. 

Saturday  —  no  shells. 

Sunday  —  About  five  shells  an  hour  between  4 
in  the  afternoon  and  midnight. 

I  give  the  number  of  shells  falling  at  this  comer 
as  a  concrete  instance  of  what  was  happening  at  a 
dozen  other  points  along  the  road.  The  fire  of  the 
German  batteries  was  as  capricious  as  the  play  of 
a  search-light;  one  week,  the  corner  and  three  or 
four  other  points  would  catch  it,  the  next  week 
82 


La  Font  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

the  comer  and  another  set  of  localities.  And  there 
were  periods,  sometimes  ten  days  to  two  weeks 
long,  when  hardly  a  shell  was  fired  at  any  road. 
Then,  after  a  certain  sense  of  security  had  begun 
to  take  form,  a  rafale  would  come  screaming  over, 
blow  a  horse  and  wagon  to  pieces,  and  leave  one 
or  two  blue  figures  huddled  in  the  mud.  But  the 
French  replied  to  each  shell  and  every  rafale,  in  ad- 
dition to  firing  at  random  all  the  day  and  a  good 
deal  of  the  night.  There  was  hardly  a  night  that 
Wisteria  Villa  did  not  rock  to  the  sound  of  French 
guns  fired  at  2  and  3  in  the  morning.  But  the 
average  day  at  Pont-a-Mousson  was  a  day  of 
random  silences.  The  war  had  all  the  capricious- 
ness  of  the  sea  —  of  uncertain  weather.  There 
were  hours  of  calm  in  the  day,  during  which  the 
desolate  silence  of  the  front  flooded  swiftly  over 
the  landscape;  there  were  interruptions  of  great 
violence,  sometimes  desultory,  sometimes  begin- 
ning, in  obedience  to  a  human  will,  at  a  certain 
hour.  The  outbreak  would  commence  with  the 
orderliness  of  a  clock  striking,  and  continue  the 
greater  part  of  the  day,  rocking  the  deserted  town 
with  its  clamor.  Hearing  it,  the  soldiers  en  repos 
would  say,  talking  of  The  Wood,  "It  sings  (ja 
chante),"  or,  "It  knocks  (fa  tape)  up  there  to- 

83 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

day."  The  smoke  of  the  bursting  shells  hung 
over  The  Wood  in  a  darkish,  gray-blue  fog.  But 
since  The  Wood  had  a  personality  for  us,  many 
would  say  simply,  "Listen  to  The  Wood." 

The  shell  expresses  one  idea  —  energy.  The 
cylinder  of  iron,  piercing  the  air  at  a  terrific 
speed,  sings  a  song  of  swift,  appalling  energy,  of 
which  the  final  explosion  is  the  only  fitting  cul- 
mination. One  gets,  too,  an  idea  of  an  unbending 
volition  in  the  thing.  After  a  certain  time  at  the 
front  the  ear  learns  to  distinguish  the  sound  of  a 
big  shell  from  a  small  shell,  and  to  know  roughly 
whether ,or  not  one  is  in  the  danger  zone.  It  was  a 
grim  jest  with  us  that  it  took  ten  days  to  qualify 
as  a  shell  expert,  and  at  the  end  of  two  weeks  all 
those  who  qualified  attended  the  funeral  of  those 
who  had  failed.  Life  at  The  Wood  had  an  inter- 
esting uncertainty. 

A  quarter  of  a  mile  beyond  the  corner,  on  the 
slope  of  Puvenelle  opposite  The  Wood,  stood 
Montauville,  the  last  habitable  village  of  the 
region.  To  the  south  of  it  rose  the  wooded  slopes 
of  Puvenelle;  to  the  north,  seen  across  a  marshy 
meadow,  were  the  slope  and  the  ridge  of  the  Bois- 
le-Pretre.  The  dirty,  mud-spattered  village  was 
caught   between   the   leathery   sweeps   of   two 

84 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

wooded  ridges.  Three  winding  roads,  tramped 
into  a  pie  of  mire,  crossed  the  grassy  slope  of  The 
Wood,  and  disappeared  into  the  trees  at  the  top. 
Though  less  than  a  mile  from  the  first  German 
line,  the  village,  because  of  its  protection  from 
shells  by  a  spur  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  was  in  re- 
markably good  condition;  the  only  building  to 
show  cunspicuous  damage  being  the  church, 
whose  steeple  had  been  twice  struck.  It  was 
curious  to  see  pigeons  flying  in  and  out  of  the  bel- 
fry through  the  shell  rents  in  the  roof.  Here  and 
there,  among  the  uncultivated  fields  of  those  who 
had  fled,  were  the  green  fields  of  some  one  who  had 
stayed.  A  woman  of  seventy  still  kept  open  her 
grocery  shop;  it  was  extraordinarily  dirty,  full  of 
buzzing  flies,  and  smelled  of  spilled  wine. 

"Why  did  you  stay?"  I  asked  her. 

"Because  I  did  not  want  to  leave  the  village. 
Of  course  my  daughter  wanted  me  to  come  to 
Dijon.  Imagine  me  in  Dijon,  I,  who  have  been  to 
Nancy  only  once!  A  fine  figure  I  should  make  in 
Dijon  in  my  sabots!" 

"And  you  are  not  afraid  of  the  shells?" 

"  Oh,  I  should  be  afraid  of  them  if  I  ever  went 
out  in  the  street.  But  I  never  leave  my  shop." 

And  so  she  stayed,  selling  the  three  staples  of 

85 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  French  front,  Camembert  cheese,  Norwegian 
sardines,  and  cakes  of  chocolate.  But  Montau- 
ville  was  far  from  safe.  It  was  there  that  I  first 
saw  a  man  killed.  I  had  been  talking  to  a  sentr}% 
a  small  young  fellow  of  twenty-one  or  two,  with 
yellow  hair  and  gray-blue  eyes  full  of  weariness. 
He  complained  of  a  touch  of  jaundice,  and  wished 
heartily  that  the  whole  affaire  — meaning  the  war 
in  general  —  was  finished.  He  was  very  anxious  to 
know  if  the  Americans  thought  the  Boches  were 
going  to  win.  Some  vague  idea  of  winning  the  war 
just  to  get  even  with  the  Boches  seemed  to  be  in 
his  mind.  I  assured  him  that  American  opinion 
was  optimistic  in  regard  to  the  chances  of  the  Al- 
lies, and  strolled  away.  Hardly  had  I  gone  ten 
feet,  when  a  "seventy-seven"  shell,  arriving  with- 
out warning,  went  Zip-bang,  and,  turning  to 
crouch  to  the  wall,  I  saw  the  sentry  crumple  up 
in  the  mud.  It  was  as  if  he  were  a  rubber  effigy 
of  a  man  blown  up  with  air,  and  some  one  had 
suddenly  ripped  the  envelope.  His  rifle  fell  from 
him,  and  he,  bending  from  the  waist,  leaned  face 
down  into  the  mud.  I  was  the  first  to  get  to  him. 
The  young,  discontented  face  was  full  of  the  gray 
street  mud,  there  was  mud  in  the  hollows  of  the 
eyes,  in  the  mouth,  in  the  fluffy  mustache.  A 
86 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

chunk  of  the  shell  had  ripped  open  the  left  breast 
to  the  heart.  Down  his  sleeve,  as  down  a  pipe, 
flowed  a  hasty  drop,  drop,  drop  of  blood  that 
mixed  with  the  mire. 

Several  times  a  day,  at  stated  hours,  the  num- 
bers of  German  missiles  that  had  fallen  into  the 
trenches  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  together  with 
French  answers  to  them,  would  be  telephoned  to 
headquarters.  The  soldier  in  charge  of  the  tele- 
phone was  an  instructor  in  Latin  in  a  French  pro- 
vincial university,  a  tall,  stoop-shouldered  man, 
with  an  indefinite,  benevolent  smile  curiously 
framed  on  thin  lips.  Probably  very  much  of  a 
scholar  by  training  and  feeling,  he  had  accepted 
his  military  destiny,  and  was  as  much  a  poilu  as 
anybody.  During  his  leisure  hours  he  was  busy 
writing  a  "Comparison  of  the  Campaign  on  the 
Marne  and  the  Aisne  with  Caesar's  battles  against 
the  Belgian  Confederacy."  He  had  a  paper  edi- 
tion of  the  Gallic  Wars  which  he  carried  round 
with  him.  One  day  he  explained  his  thesis  to 
me.  He  drew  a  plan  with  a  green  pencil  on  a  piece 
of  paper. 

"See,  mon  ami,"  he  exclaimed,  "here  is  the 
Aisne,  Caesar's  Axona;  here  is  Berry-au-Bac;  here 
was  Caesar,  here  were  the  invaders,  here  was 

87 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

General  French,  here  Foch,  here  Von  Kluck. 
Curious,  is  n't  it  —  two  thousand  years  after- 
ward? "  His  eyes  for  an  instant  filled  with  dreamy 
perplexity.  A  little  while  later  I  would  hear  hun 
mechanically  telephoning.  "Poste  A —  five 
'seventy-seven'  shells,  six  mines,  twelve  trench 
shells;  answer  —  ten  'seventy-five'  shells,  eight 
mines,  eighteen  trench  shells;  Poste  B  —  two 
'seventy-seven'  shells,  one  mine,  six  grenades; 
answer  —  fifteen  'seventy-five'  shells;  Poste  C  — 
one  'two  hundred  and  ten'  shell,  fifty  mines; 
answer  —  sixty  mines;  Poste  D  — " 

At  Dieulouard  I  had  entered  the  shell  zone;  at 
Pont-a-Mousson,  I  crossed  the  borders  of  the  zone 
of  quiet;  at  Montauville  began  the  last  zone  — 
the  zone  of  invisibility  and  violence.  Civilian  life 
ended  at  the  western  end  of  the  village  street 
with  the  abruptness  of  a  man  brought  face  to  face 
with  a  high  wall.  Beyond  the  village  a  road  was 
seen  climbing  the  grassy  slope  of  Puvenelle,  to 
disappear  as  it  neared  the  summit  of  the  ridge  in  a 
brown  wood.  It  was  just  an  ordinary  hill  road  of 
Lorraine,  but  the  fact  that  it  was  the  direct  road 
to  the  trenches  invested  this  climbing,  winding, 
silent  length  with  extraordinary  character.  The 
gate  of  the  zone  of  violence,  every  foot  of  it  bore 
88 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

some  scar  of  the  war,  now  trivial,  now  gigantic  — 
always  awesome  in  the  power  and  volition  it  re- 
vealed. One  passed  from  the  sight  of  a  brown 
puddle,  scooped  in  the  surface  of  the  street  by  an 
exploding  shell,  to  a  view  of  a  magnificent  ash  tree 
splintered  by  some  projectile.  It  is  a  very  rare 
thing  to  see  a  sinister  landscape,  but  this  whole 
road  was  sinister.  I  used  to  discuss  this  sinister 
quality  with  a  distinguished  French  artist  who  as 
a  poiki  was  the  infirmier,  or  medical  service  man, 
attached  to  a  squad  of  engineers  working  in  a 
quarry  frequently  shelled.  In  this  frightful  place 
we  discussed  la  qualite  du  sinislre  dans  Vart  (the 
sinister  in  art)  as  calmly  as  if  we  were  two  Paris- 
ian critics  sitting  on  the  benches  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg Gardens.  As  the  road  advanced  into  the 
wood,  there  was  hardly  a  wayside  tree  that  had 
not  been  struck  by  a  shell.  Branches  hung  dead 
from  trees,  twigs  had  been  lopped  off  by  stray 
fragments,  great  trunks  were  split  apart  as  if  by 
lightning.  "Nature  as  Nature  isnever  sinister," 
said  the  artist;  "it  is  when  there  is  a  disturbance 
of  the  relations  between  Nature  and  human  life 
that  you  have  the  sinister.  Have  you  ever  seen 
the  villages  beyond  Ravenna  overwhelmed  by  the 
bogs?  There  you  see  the  sinister.   Here  Man  is 

89 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

making  Nature  unlivable  for  Man."  He  stroked 
his  fine  silky  beard  meditatively  —  "This  will  all 
end  when  the  peasants  plant  again."  As  we  talked, 
a  shell,  intended  for  the  batteries  behind,  burst 
high  above  us. 

Skirting  the  ravine,  now  wooded,  between 
Puvenelle  and  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  the  road  con- 
tinued westward  till  it  emerged  upon  the  high 
plateau  of  La  Woevre;  the  last  kilometre  being  in 
full  view  of  the  Germans  entrenched  on  the  ridge 
across  the  rapidly  narrowing,  rising  ravine.  Along 
this  visible  space  the  trees  and  bushes  by  the 
roadside  were  matted  by  shell  fire  into  an  inextri- 
cable confusion  of  destruction,  and  through  the 
wisps  and  splinters  of  this  ruin  was  seen  the  ridge 
of  the  Bois-le-Pretre  rapidly  attaining  the  level  of 
the  moor.  At  length  the  forest  of  Puvenelle,  the 
ravine,  and  the  Bois-le-Pretre  ended  together  in  a 
rolling  sweep  of  f  urzy  fields  cut  off  to  the  west  and 
north  by  a  vast  billow  of  the  moor  which,  like  the 
rim  of  a  saucer,  closed  the  wide  horizon.  Con- 
tinuing straight  ahead,  the  Puvenelle  road 
mounted  this  rise,  dipped  and  disappeared.  Half- 
way between  the  edge  of  the  forest  of  Puvenelle 
and  this  crest  stood  an  abandoned  inn,  a  common- 
place building  made  of  buff-brown  moorland 
90 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

stone  trimmed  with  red  brick.  Close  by  this  inn, 
at  right  angles  to  the  Puvenelle  road,  another 
road  turned  to  the  north  and  Hkewise  disappeared 
over  the  lift  in  the  moor.  At  the  corner  stood  a 
government  signpost  of  iron  slightly  bent  back, 
bearing  in  gray-white  letters  on  its  clay-blue 
plaque  the  legend  — 

Thiaucourt,  12  kilometres 
Metz,  25  kilometres 

There  was  not  a  soul  anywhere  in  sight;  I  was 
surrounded  with  evidences  of  terrific  violence  — 
the  shattered  trees,  the  shell  holes  in  the  road,  the 
brown-lipped  craters  in  the  earth  of  the  fields,  the 
battered  inn;  but  there  was  not  a  sign  of  the  cre- 
ators of  this  devastation.  A  northwest  wind  blew 
in  great  salvos  across  the  mournful,  lonely  pla- 
teau, rippling  the  furze,  and  brought  to  my  ears 
the  pounding  of  shells  from  behind  the  rise.  When 
I  got  to  this  rim  a  soldier,  a  big,  blond  fellow  of 
the  true  Gaulois  type  with  drooping  yellow  mus- 
taches, climbed  slowly  out  of  a  hole  in  the  ground. 
The  effect  was  startling.  I  had  arrived  at  the  line 
where  the  earth  of  France  completely  swallows 
up  the  army.  This  disappearance  of  life  in  a 
decor  of  intense  action  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
things  of  the  war.  All  about  in  the  surface  of  the 

91 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

earth  were  little,  square,  sooty  holes  that  served  as 
chimneys,  and  here  and  there  rectangular,  grave- 
like openings  in  the  soil  showing  three  or  four  big 
steps  descending  to  a  subterranean  hut.  Fifty 
feet  away  not  a  sign  of  human  life  could  be  dis- 
tinguished. Six  feet  under  the  ground,  framed  in 
the  doorway  of  a  hut,  a  young,  black-haired  fel- 
low in  a  dark-brown  jersey  stood  smiUng  pleas- 
antly up  at  us;  it  was  he  who  was  to  be  my  guide 
to  the  various  pastes  and  trenches  that  I  had  need 
to  know.  He  came  up  to  greet  me. 

"  Better  bring  him  down  here,"  growled  a  voice 
from  somewhere  in  the  earth.  "There  have  been 
bullets  crossing  the  road  all  afternoon." 

"I  am  going  to  show  him  the  Quart-en- 
Reserve  first." 

The  Quart-en-Reserve  (Reserved  Quarter)  was 
the  section  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre  which,  because 
of  its  situation  on  the  crest  of  the  great  ridge,  had 
been  the  most  fiercely  contested.  We  crept  up  on 
the  edge  of  the  ridge  and  looked  over.  An  open, 
level  field  some  three  hundred  yards  wide  swept 
from  the  Thiaucourt  road  to  the  edges  of  the 
Bois-le-Pretre;  across  this  field  ran  in  the  most 
confused  manner  a  strange  pattern  of  brown  lines 
that  disappeared  among  the  stumps  and  poles  of 
92 


y 

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1 

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1 

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THE   QUAKT-EN-RESERVE 


READY    FOR   GAS— A   BRAZIER   AND   A    BOTTLE   OF   GASOLENE 
Hot  air  causes  the  gas  to  ascend 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

the  haggard  wood  to  the  east.  To  the  northwest 
of  this  plateau,  on  the  road  ahead  of  us,  stood  a 
ruined  village  caught  in  the  torment  of  the  lines. 
Here  and  there,  in  some  twenty  or  thirty  places 
scattered  over  the  scarred  plateau,  the  smoke  of 
trench  shells  rose  in  little  curling  pufiFs  of  gray- 
black  that  quickly  dissolved  in  the  wind. 

"  The  Quart  is  never  quiet,"  said  my  guide.  "  It 
is  now  half  ours,  half  theirs." 

Close  to  the  ground,  a  blot  of  light  flashed 
swifter  than  a  stroke  of  lightning,  and  a  heavier, 
thicker  smoke  rolled  away. 

"That  is  one  of  ours.  We  are  answering  their 
trench  shells  with  an  occasional '  one  hundred  and 
twenty.'" 

"How  on  earth  is  it  that  everybody  is  not 
killed?" 

"  Because  the  regiment  has  occupied  the  Quart 
so  long  that  we  know  every  foot,  every  turn,  every 
shelter  of  it.  When  we  see  a  trench  shell  coming, 
we  know  just  where  to  go.  It  is  only  the  new- 
comers who  get  killed.  Two  months  past,  when 
a  new  regiment  occupied  the  Quart  during  our 
absence  en  repos,  it  lost  twenty-five  men  in  one 
day." 

The  first  trench  that  I  entered  was  a  simple 

93 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

trench  about  seven  feet  deep,  with  no  trimmings 
whatsoever,  just  such  a  trench  as  might  have 
been  dug  for  the  accommodation  of  a  large  water 
conduit.  We  walked  on  a  narrow  board  walk  very 
shppery  with  cheesy,  red-brown  mire.  Ffbm  time 
to  time  the  hammer  crash  of  a  shell  sounded  un- 
comfortably near,  and  bits  of  dirt  and  pebbles, 
dislodged  by  the  concussion,  fell  from  the  wall  of 
the  passage.  The  only  vista  was  the  curving  wall 
of  the  long  communication  trench  and  the  soft  sky 
of  Lorraine,  lit  with  the  pleasant  sunlight  of  mid- 
dle afternoon,  and  islanded  with  great  golden- 
white  cloud  masses.  My  guide  and  I  might  have 
been  the  last  persons  left  in  a  world  of  strange 
and  terrible  noises.  The  hoyau  (communication 
trench)  began  to  turn  and  wind  about  in  the 
most  perplexing  manner,  and  we  entered  a  veri- 
table labyrinth.  This  extraordinary,  baffling  com- 
plexity is  due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  the 
trenches  advance  and  retreat,  rise  and  fall,  in 
order  to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  for 
defense  afforded  by  every  change  in  the  topogra- 
phy of  the  region.  I  remember  one  area  along  the 
front  consisting  of  two  round,  grassy  hills  divided 
by  a  small,  grassy  valley  whose  floor  rose  gently 
to  a  low  ridge  connecting  the  two  heights.  In  this 

94 


La  Forit  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

terrain  the  defensive  line  began  on  the  first  hill  as 
a  semicircle  edging  the  grassy  slopes  presented 
to  the  enemy,  then  retreated,  sinking  some  forty 
feet,  to  take  advantage  of  the  connecting  link  of 
upland  at  the  head  of  the  ravine,  and  took  semi- 
circular form  again  on  the  flat,  broad  summit  of 
the  second  hiU.  In  the  meadows  at  the  base  of 
these  hills  a  brook  flowing  from  the  ravine  had 
created  a  great  swamp,  somewhat  in  the  shape  of 
a  wedge  pointing  outward  from  the  mouth  of  the 
valley.  The  lines  of  the  enemy,  edging  this  tract 
of  mire,  were  consequently  in  the  shape  of  an  open 
V.  Thus  the  military  situation  at  this  particular 
point  may  be  pictorially  represented  by  a  salient 
semicircle,  a  dash,  and  another  salient  semicircle 
faced  by  a  wide,  open  V.  Imagine  such  a  situation 
complicated  by  offensive  and  counter-offensive, 
during  which  the  French  have  seized  part  of  the 
hills  and  the  German  part  of  the  plain,  till  the 
whole  region  is  a  madman's  maze  of  barbed  wire, 
earthy  lines,  trenches,  —  some  of  them  untenable 
by  either  side  and  still  full  of  the  dead  who  fell  in 
the  last  combat,  —  shell  holes,  and  fortified  cra- 
ters. Such  was  something  of  the  situation  in 
that  wind-swept  plain  at  the  edge  of  the  Bois- 
le-Pretre.  I  leave  for  other  chapters  the  account 

95 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

of  an  average  day  in  the  trenches  and  the  story  of 
the  great  German  attack,  preferring  to  tell  here  of 
the  general  impressions  made  by  the  appearance 
of  the  trenches  themselves.  Two  pictures  stand 
out,  particularly,  the  dead  on  the  barbed  wire, 
and  the  village  called  "Fey  au  Rats"  at  night. 

"  The  next  line  is  the  first  line.  Speak  in  whis- 
pers now,  for  if  the  Boches  hear  us  we  shall  get  a 
shower  of  hand-grenades." 

I  turned  into  a  deep,  wide  trench  whose  floor 
had  been  trodden  into  a  slop  of  cheesy,  brown 
mire  which  clung  to  the  big  hobnailed  boots  of  the 
soldiers.  Every  foot  or  so  along  the  parapet  there 
was  a  rifle  slit,  made  by  the  insertion  of  a  wedge- 
shaped  wooden  box  into  the  wall  of  brownish 
sandbags,  and  the  sentries  stood  about  six  feet 
apart.  The  trench  had  the  hushed  quiet  of  a  sick- 
room. 

"Do  you  want  to  see  the  Boches?  Here;  come, 
put  your  eye  to  this  rifle  slit." 

A  horizontal  tangle  of  barbed  wire  lay  before 
me,  the  shapeless  gully  of  an  empty  trench,  and, 
thirty-five  feet  awaj',  another  blue-gray  tangle 
of  barbed  wire  and  a  low  ripple  of  the  brownish 
earth.  As  I  looked,  one  of  the  random  silences  of 
the  front  stole  swiftly  into  the  air.  French  trench 
96 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

and  German  trench  were  perfectly  silent;  you 
could  have  heard  the  ticking  of  a  watch. 

"You  never  see  them?" 

"Only  when  we  attack  them  or  they  attack 
us." 

An  old  poilu,  with  a  friendly  smile  revealing 
a  jagged  reef  of  yellow  teeth,  whispered  to  me 
amiably:  — 

"See  them?  Good  Lord,  it's  bad  enough  to 
smell  them.  You  ought  to  thank  the  good  God, 
young  man,  that  the  wind  is  carrying  it  over  our 
heads." 

"Any  wounded  to-day?" 

"Yes;  a  corporal  had  his  leg  ripped  up  about 
half  an  hour  ago." 

At  a  point  a  mile  or  so  farther  down  the  moor  I 
looked  again  out  of  a  rifle  box.  No  Man's  Land 
had  widened  to  some  three  hundred  feet  of  wav- 
ing furze,  over  whose  surface  gusts  of  wind  passed 
as  over  the  surface  of  the  sea.  About  fifty  feet 
from  the  German  trenches  was  a  swathe  of  barbed 
wire  supported  on  a  row  of  five  stout,  wooden 
posts.  So  thickly  was  the  wire  strung  that  the  eye 
failed  to  distinguish  the  individual  filaments  and 
saw  only  the  rows  of  brown-black  posts  filled  with 
a  steely  purple  mist.  Upon  this  mist  hung  masses 

97 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

of  weather-beaten  blue  rags  whose  edges  waved  in 
the  wind. 

"Des  camarades"  (comrades),  said  my  guide 
very  quietly. 

A  month  later  I  saw  the  ruined  village  of  Fey- 
en-Haye  by  the  Ught  of  the  full  golden  shield  of 
the  Hunters'  Moon.  The  village  had  been  taken 
from  the  Germans  in  the  spring,  and  was  now  in 
the  French  lines,  which  crossed  the  village  street 
and  continued  right  on  through  the  houses.  "  The 
first  village  on  the  road  to  Metz"  had  tumbled, 
in  piles  and  mounds  of  rubbish,  out  on  a  street 
grown  high  with  grass.  Moonlight  poured  into  the 
roofless  cottages,  escaping  by  shattered  walls  and 
jagged  rents,  and  the  mounds  of  debris  took  on 
fantastic  outlines  and  cast  strange  shadows.  In 
the  middle  of  the  village  street  stood  two  wooden 
crosses  marking  the  graves  of  soldiers.  It  was  the 
Biblical  "Abomination  of  Desolation." 

Looking  at  Fey  from  the  end  of  the  village 
street,  I  slowly  realized  that  it  was  not  without 
inhabitants.  Wandering  through  the  grass, 
scurrying  over  the  rubbish  heaps,  running  in  and 
out  of  the  crumbling  thresholds  were  thousands 
and  thousands  of  rats. 

Across  the  bright  sky  came  a  whirring  hum,  the 
98 


La  Foret  de  Bois-le-Pretre 

sound  of  the  motors  of  aeroplanes  on  the  way  to 
bombard  the  railroad  station  at  Metz.  I  looked 
up,  but  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen.  The  hum- 
ming died  away.  The  bent  signpost  at  the  corner 
of  the  deserted  moorland  road,  with  its  arrow  and 
its  directions,  somehow  seemed  a  strange,  shad- 
owy symbol  of  the  impossibility  of  the  attainment 
of  many  human  aspirations. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    TRENCHES  IN   THE   "  WOOD  OF   DEATH" 

So  great  has  been  the  interest  in  the  purely  mili- 
tary side  of  the  struggle  that  one  is  apt  to  forget 
that  the  war  is  worth  study  as  the  supreme  occu- 
pation of  many  great  nations,  whose  every  energy, 
physical,  moral,  and  economic,  has  been  put  to 
its  service,  and  relentlessly  tested  in  its  fiery  fur- 
nace. A  future  historian  may  find  the  war  more 
interesting,  when  considered  as  the  supreme 
achievement  of  the  industrial  civilization  of  the 
nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries,  than  as  a 
mere  vortex  in  the  age-old  ocean  of  European 
political  strife.  There  is  something  awe-inspiring 
in  the  spectacle  of  all  the  continuous  and  multi- 
tudinous'activity  of  a  great  nation  feeding,  by  a 
thousand  channels,  a  thousand  rills,  to  the  em- 
battled furrows  of  the  zone  of  violence. 

By  a  strange  decree  of  fate,  a  new  warfare  has 
come  into  being,  admirably  adapted  to  the  use 
and  the  testing  of  all  our  faculties,  organizations, 
and  inventions  —  trench  warfare.  The  principal 
element  of  this  modern  warfare  is  lack  of  mobility. 

100 


The  ^'PP^ood  of  Death" 

The  lines  advance,  the  lines  retreat,  but  never 
once,  since  the  establishment  of  the  present 
trench  swathe,  have  the  lines  of  either  combatant 
been  pushed  clear  out  of  the  normal  zone  of  hos- 
tilities. The  fierce,  invisible  combats  are  limited 
to  the  first-line  positions,  averaging  a  mile  each 
way  behind  No  Man's  Land.  This  stationary 
chaiucter  has  made  the  war  a  daily  battle;  it  has 
robbed  war  of  all  its  ancient  panoply,  its  cavalry, 
its  uniforms  brilliant  as  the  sun,  and  has  turned  it 
into  the  national  business.  I  dislike  to  use  the 
word  "business,"  with  its  usual  atmosphere  of 
orderly  bargaining;  I  intend  rather  to  call  up  an 
idea  more  familiar  to  American  minds  —  the  idea 
of  a  great  intricate  organization  with  a  corpo- 
rate volition.  The  war  of  to-day  is  a  business,  the 
people  are  the  stockholders,  and  the  object  of  the 
organization  is  the  wisest  application  of  violence 
to  the  enemy. 

To  this  end,  in  numberless  secteurs  along  the 
front,  special  narrow-gauge  railroad  lines  have 
been  built  directly  from  the  railroad  station  at  the 
edge  of  the  shell  zone  to  the  artillery  positions. 
To  this  end  the  trenches  have  been  gathered  into 
a  special  telephone  system  so  that  General  Joffre 
at  Chantilly  can  talk  to  any  officers  or  soldiers 

lOI 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

anyw'here  along  the  great  swathe.  The  food,  sup- 
pHes,  clothing,  and  ammunition  are  delivered 
every  day  at  the  gate  of  the  swathe,  and  calmly 
redistributed  to  the  trenches  by  a  sort  of  military 
express  system. 

Only  one  thing  ever  disturbs  the  vast,  orderly 
system.  The  bony  fingers  of  Death  will  persist  in 
getting  into  the  cogs  of  the  machine. 

The  front  is  divided,  according  to  military  exi- 
gencies, into  a  number  of  roughly  equal  lengths 
called  sedeurs.  Each  secteur  is  an  administrative 
unit  with  its  own  government  and  its  own  system 
adapted  to  the  local  situation.  The  heart  of  this 
unit  is  the  railroad  station  at  which  the  supplies 
arrive  for  the  shell  zone;  in  a  normal  secteur,  one 
military  train  arrives  every  day  bringing  the 
needed  supplies,  and  one  hospital  train  departs, 
carrying  the  sick  and  wounded  to  the  hospitals. 
The  station  at  the  front  is  always  a  scene  of 
considerable  activity,  especially  when  the  train 
arrives;  there  are  pictures  of  old  poilus  in  red 
trousers  pitching  out  yellow  hay  for  the  horses, 
commissary  officers  getting  their  rations,  and 
arlilleurs  stacking  shells. 

The  train  not  being  able  to  continue  into  the 
shell  zone,  the  suppUes  are  carried  to  the  dis- 

I02 


The  <'  JVood  of  Death  " 

tributing  station  at  the  trenches  in  a  convoy  of 
wagons,  called  the  ravilaillement.  Every  single 
night,  somewhere  along  the  road,  each  side  tries 
to  smash  up  the  other's  ravitaillement.  To  avoid 
this,  the  ravitaillement  wagons  start  at  different 
hours  after  dark,  now  at  dusk,  now  at  midnight. 
Sometimes,  close  by  the  trenches  on  a  clear,  still 
night,  the  plashing  and  creaking  of  the  enemy's 
wagons  can  be  heard  through  the  massacred 
trees.  I  remember  being  shelled  along  one  bleak 
stretch  of  moorland  road  just  after  a  drenching 
December  rain.  The  trench  lights  rising  over 
The  Wood,  three  miles  away,  made  the  wet  road 
glow  with  a  tarnished  glimmer,  and  burnished  the 
muddy  pools  into  mirrors  of  pale  light.  The  ravi- 
taillement creaked  along  in  the  darkness.  Suddenly 
a  shell  fell  about  a  hundred  yards  away,  and  the 
wagons  brought  up  jerkily,  the  harnesses  rattling. 
For  ten  minutes  the  Germans  shelled  the  length 
of  road  just  ahead  of  us,  but  no  shell  came  closer 
to  us  than  the  first  one.  About  thirty  "seventy- 
seven"  shells  burst,  some  on  the  road,  some  on 
the  edges  of  the  fields;  we  saw  them  as  flashes  of 
reddish-violet  light  close  to  the  ground.  In  the 
middle  of  the  melee  a  trench  light  rose,  showing 
the  line  of  halted  gray  wagons,  the  motionless 
103 


A  Volunteer  Poilu ' 

horses,  and  the  helmeted  drivers.  The  whole 
affair  passed  in  silence.  When  it  was  judged  that 
the  last  shell  had  fallen,  whips  cracked  like  pistol 
shots,  and  the  line  lumbered  on  again. 

The  food  came  to  us  fresh  every  day  in  a  freight 
car  fitted  up  like  a  butcher's  shop,  in  charge  of  a 
poilu  who  was  a  butcher  in  civilian  life.  "  So  many 
men  —  so  many  grammes,"  and  he  would  cut  you 
off  a  slice.  There  was  a  daily  potato  ration,  and  a 
daily  extra,  this  last  from  a  Hst  ten  articles  long 
which  began  again  every  ten  days,  and  included 
beans,  macaroni,  lentils,  rice,  and  cheese.  The 
French  army  is  very  well  and  plenteously  fed. 
Coffee,  sugar,  wine,  and  even  tea  are  ungrudg- 
ingly furnished.  These  foods  are  taken  directly 
to  the  rear  of  the  trenches  where  the  regimental 
cooks  have  their  traveling  kitchens.  Once  the 
food  is  prepared,  the  cooks  —  the  beloved  cuis- 
tdts  —  take  it  to  the  trenches  in  great,  steaming 
kettles  and  distribute  it  to  the  men  individually. 
As  for  clothing,  every  regiment  has  a  regimental 
tailor  shop  and  supply  of  uniforms  in  the  village 
where  they  go  to  repos.  I  have  often  seen  the  sol- 
dier tailor  of  one  of  the  regiments,  a  httle  Alsatian 
Jew,  sewing  up  the  shell  rents  in  a  comrade's 
grsatcoat.  He  had  his  shop  in  a  pleasant  kitchen, 
104 


The  <*fFood  of  Death" 

and  used  to  sit  beside  the  fire  sewing  as  calmly  as 
an  old  woman. 

The  sanitary  arrangements  of  the  trenches  are 
the  usual  army  latrines,  and  very  severe  punish- 
ments are  inflicted  for  any  fouHng. 

If  a  man  is  wounded,  the  medical  service  man 
of  his  squad  {infirmier) ,  or  one  of  the  stretcher- 
bearers  (brancardiers),  takes  him  as  quickly  as 
possible  to  the  regimental  medical  post  in  the 
rear  lines.  If  the  trench  is  getting  heavily  shelled, 
and  the  wound  is  slight,  the  attendant  takes  the 
man  to  a  shelter  and  applies  first  aid  until  a  time 
comes  when  he  and  his  patient  can  proceed  to  the 
rear  with  reasonable  safety.  At  this  rear  post  the 
regimental  surgeon  cleans  the  wound,  stops  the 
bleeding,  and  sends  for  the  ambulance,  which,  at 
the  Bois-le-Pretre,  came  right  into  the  heart  of  the 
trenches  by  sunken  roads  that  were  in  reality 
broad  trenches.  The  man  is  then-  taken  to  the 
hospital  that  his  condition  requires,  the  slightly 
wounded  to  one  hospital,  and  those  requiring  an 
operation  to  another.  The  French  surgical  hos- 
pitals all  along  the  front  are  marvels  of  cleanliness 
and  order.  The  heart  of  each  hospital  is  the  power 
plant,  which  sterilizes  the  water,  runs  the  electric 
lights,  and  works  the  X-ray  generator.  Mounted 
loq 


A  Volimteer  Poilu 

on  an  automobile  body,  it  is  always  ready  to  de- 
camp in  case  the  locality  gets  too  dangerous.  You 
find  these  great,  lumbering  affairs,  half  steam- 
roller, half  donkey-engine,  in  the  courtyards  of  old 
castles,  schools,  and  great  private  houses  close  by 
the  front. 

The  first-line  trenches,  in  a  position  at  all  con- 
tested, are  very  apt  still  to  preserve  the  hurried 
arrangement  of  their  first  plan,  which  is  some- 
times hardly  any  plan  at  all.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  the  Germans  have  the  advantage  in  the 
great  majority  of  places,  for  theirs  was  the  first 
choice,  and  they  entrenched  themselves,  as  far  as 
possible,  along  the  crests  of  the  eastern  hills  of 
France,  in  a  line  long  prepared  for  just  such  an 
exigency.  It  has  been  the  frightfully  difficult  task 
of  the  Allies,  these  two  years,  not  only  to  hold  the 
positions  at  the  foot  of  these  hills,  in  which  they 
were  at  a  tactical  disadvantage,  all  their  move- 
ments being  visible  to  the  Boches  on  the  crests 
above  them,  but  also  to  attack  an  enemy  en- 
trenched in  a  strong  position  of  his  own  choosing. 
To-day  at  one  point  along  the  line,  the  French 
and  Germans  may  share  the  dominating  crest  of  a 
position,  at  another  point,  they  may  be  equally 
matched,  and  at  another,  such  as  Les  Eparges,  the 
io6 


The  <'  Wood  of  Death  " 

French,  after  fearful  losses,  have  carried  the 
coveted  eminence.  One  phase  of  the  business  of 
violence  is  the  work  of  the  military  undertaker 
attached  to  each  seckur,  who  writes  down  in  his 
little  red  book  the  names  of  the  day's  dead,  and 
arranges  for  the  wooden  cross  at  the  head  of  each 
fresh  grave.  Every  day  along  the  front  is  a  battle 
in  which  thousands  of  men  die.  The  eastern  hills 
of  France,  those  pleasant  rolling  heights  above 
Rheims,  Verdun,  and  old,  provincial  Pont-a- 
Mousson,  have  been  literally  gorged  with  blood. 
It  being  out  of  the  question  to  strengthen  or  rec- 
tify very  much  the  front-line  trenches  close  to  the 
enemy,  the  effort  has  taken  place  in  the  rear  lines. 
Wherever  there  is  a  certain  security,  the  rear  lines 
of  all  the  important  strategic  points  have  been 
converted  into  veritable  subterranean  fortresses. 
The  floor  plan  of  these  trenches  is  an  adaptation 
of  the  military  theory  of  fortification  —  with  its 
angles,  salients,  and  bastions  —  to  the  topography 
of  the  region.  The  gigantic  concrete  walls  of  the 
bomb-proof  shelters,  the  little  forts  to  shelter  the 
machine  guns,  and  the  concrete  passages  in  the 
rear-line  trenches  will  appear  as  heavy  and  mas- 
sive to  future  generations  as  Roman  masonry  ap- 
pears to  us.  There  are,  of  course,  many  unimpor- 
107 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

tant  little  links  of  the  trench  system,  upon  whose 
holding  nothing  depends  and  for  whose  domina- 
tion neither  side  cares  to  spend  the  life  of  a  single 
soldier,  that  have  only  an  apology  for  a  second 
position.  The  war  needs  the  money  for  the  prepa- 
ration of  important  places.  At  vital  points  there 
may  be  the  tremendously  powerful  second  line,  a 
third  line,  and  even  a  fourth  line.  The  region  be- 
tween Verdun  and  the  lines,  for  instance,  is  the 
most  fearful  snarl  of  barbed  wire,  pits,  and  buried 
explosives  that  could  be  imagined.  The  distance 
would  have  to  be  contested  inch  by  inch. 

The  trench  theory  is  built  about  the  soldier.  It 
must  preserve  him  as  far  as  possible  from  artillery 
and  from  an  infantry  attack.  The  defenses  begin 
with  barbed  wire;  then  come  the  rifles  and  the 
machine  guns;  and  behind  them  the  hght  artil- 
lery, the  "seventy-fives,"  and  the  hea\'y  artillery, 
the  "one  hundred  and  twenties,"  "two  hundred 
and  twenties,"  and,  now,  an  immense  howitzer 
whose  real  caliber  has  been  carefully  concealed. 
To  take  a  trench  position  means  the  crossing  of 
the  entanglements  of  No  Man's  Land  under  fire 
from  artillery,  rifles,  and  machine  guns,  an  almost 
impossible  proceeding.  An  advance  is  possible 
only  after  the  opposing  trenches  have  been  made 
io8 


The  '^PFood  of  Death" 

untenable  by  the  concentration  of  artillery  fire. 
The  great  offensives  begin  by  blowing  the  first 
lines  absolutely  to  pieces;  this  accomplished, 
the  attacking  infantry  advances  to  the  vacated 
trenches  under  the  rifle  fire  of  those  few  whom  the 
terrible  deluge  of  shells  has  not  killed  or  crazed, 
works  toward  the  strong  second  position  under  a 
concentrated  artillery  fire  of  the  retreating  enemy 
as  terrible  as  its  own,  fights  its  way  heroically  into 
the  second  position,  and  stops  there.  The  great 
line  has  been  bent,  has  been  dented,  but  never 
broken.  An  offensive  must  cover  at  least  twenty 
miles  of  front,  for  if  the  break  is  too  narrow  the 
attacking  troops  will  be  massacred  by  the  enemy 
artillery  at  both  ends  of  the  broken  first  Hues.  If 
the  front  lines  are  one  mile  deep,  the  artillery 
must  put  twenty-five  square  miles  of  trenches 
hors  de  combat,  a  task  that  takes  millions  of  shells. 
By  the  time  that  the  first  line  has  been  destroyed 
and  the  troops  have  reached  the  second  line,  the 
shells  and  the  men  are  pretty  well  used  up.  A  great 
successful  offensive  on  the  western  front  is  theo- 
retically possible,  given  miUions  of  men,  but  prac- 
tically impossible.  Outside  of  important  local 
gains,  the  great  western  offensives  have  been  fail- 
ures. Champagne  was  a  failure,  the  Calais  drive 
109 


A  Volunteer  Foilu 

was  a  failure,  Verdun  was  a  failure,  and  the  drive 
on  the  Somme  has  only  bent  the  lines.  The  Ger- 
mans may  shorten  their  lines  because  of  a  lack  of 
men,  but  I  firmly  believe  that  neither  their  Hne 
nor  the  Allies'  line  will  ever  be  broken.  What  will 
be  the  end  if  the  Allies  cannot  wrest  from  Ger- 
many, Belgium  and  that  part  of  northern  France 
she  is  holding  for  ransom  —  to  obtain  good  terms 
at  the  peace  congress?  Is  Germany  slowly,  very 
slowly  going  under,  or  are  we  going  to  witness 
complete  European  exhaustion?  Whatever  hap- 
pens, poor,  mourning,  desolated  France  will  hold 
to  the  end. 

In  localities  where  no  great  offensive  is  con- 
templated, and  the  business  of  violence  has  be- 
come a  routine,  the  object  of  the  commander  is  to 
keep  the  enemy  on  the  qui-vive,  demoralize  him 
by  killing  and  wounding  his  soldiers,  and  prevent 
him  from  strengthening  his  first  lines.  Relations 
take  on  the  character  of  an  exchange;  one  day  the 
French  throw  a  thousand  mines  (high-explosive 
trench  shells)  into  the  German  lines,  and  the  next 
day  the  Germans  throw  a  thousand  back.  The 
French  smash  up  a  village  where  German  troops 
are  en  repos;  while  it  is  being  done,  the  Germans 
begin  to  blow  a  French  village  to  pieces.  In  the 
no 


The  ^^PFood  of  Death'' 

trenches  the  individual  soldiers  throw  grenades  at 
each  other,  and  wish  that  the  whole  tiresome 
business  was  done  with.  They  have  two  weeks  in 
the  trenches  and  two  weeks  out  of  them  in  a  can- 
tonment behind  the  lines.  The  period  in  the 
trenches  is  divided  between  the  first  lines  and  the 
rear  lines  of  the  first  position.  Often  on  my  way 
to  the  trenches  at  night  I  would  pass  a  regiment 
coming  to  repos.  Silent,  vaguely  seen,  in  broken 
step  the  regiment  passed.  Sometimes  a  shell 
would  come  whistling  in. 

There  was  one  part  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre  region 
upon  which  nothing  depended,  and  the  war  had 
there  settled  into  the  casual  exchange  of  powder 
and  old  iron  that  obtains  upon  two  thirds  of  the 
front.  At  the  entrance  to  this  position,  in  the 
shadow  of  a  beautiful  clump  of  ash  trees,  stood 
the  rustic  shelters  of  the  regimental  cooks.  From 
behind  the  wall  of  trees  came  a  terrifying  crash. 
The  war-gray,  iron  field  kitchen,  which  the  army 
slang  calls  a  contre-torpilleur  (torpedo-boat  de- 
stroyer), stood  in  a  little  clearing  of  the  wood; 
there  was  nothing  beautiful  to  the  machine, 
which  was  simply  an  iron  box,  two  feet  high  and 
four  feet  square,  mounted  on  big  wheels,  and 
III 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

fitted  with  a  high  oval  chimney.  A  halo  of  kitch- 
eny  smell  floated  about  it,  and  the  open  door  of 
its  fire-box,  in  which  brands  were  burning  furi- 
ously, and  a  jet  of  vapor  from  somewhere,  gave  it 
quite  the  appearance  of  an  odd  steam  engine. 
Beside  the  contre-torpilleur  stood  the  two  cooks, 
both  unusually  small  in  stature.  One  was  about 
thirty-two  or  three  years  old,  chunky,  and  gifted 
with  short,  strong,  hairy  arms;  the  other  was 
much  slighter,  younger,  and  so  juvenile  of  face 
that  his  downy  mustache  was  almost  invisible.  I 
knew  these  men  very  well;  one,  the  older,  was  a 
farmhand  in  a  village  of  Touraine,  and  the  other, 
an  errand  boy  in  a  bookbinding  works  at  Saint- 
Denis.  The  war  had  turned  them  into  regimental 
cooks,  though  it  was  the  older  man  who  did  most 
of  the  cooking,  while  the  boy  occupied  himself 
with  gathering  wood  and  distributing  the  food. 
The  latter  once  confessed  to  me  that  when  he 
heard  that  Americans  were  coming  to  the  Bois-le- 
Pretre,  he  had  expected  to  see  Indians,  and  that 
he  and  his  comrades  had  joked,  half  in  jest,  half 
in  earnest,  about  the  Boches  going  to  lose  their 
scalps.  The  other  was  famous  for  an  episode  of 
the  July  attacks:  cornered  in  the  trench  by  a 
Boche,  he  had  emptied  his  kettle  of  hot  soup  over 

112 


The  "fFood  of  Death" 

the  man's  head  and  finished  him  off  with  a  knife. 
They  waved  friendlily  at  me.  The  farmhand,  in 
particular,  was  one  of  the  pleasantest  fellows  who 
ever  breathed;  and  still  fond,  Uke  a  true  good  man 
of  Touraine,  of  a  Rabelaisian  jest. 

The  road  now  entered  the  wood,  and  continued 
straight  ahead  down  a  pleasant  vista  of  young  ash 
trees.  Suddenly  a  trench,  bearing  its  name  in 
little  black,  dauby  letters  on  a  piece  of  yellow 
board  the  size  of  a  shingle,  began  by  the  side  of 
the  forest  road,  and  I  went  down  into  it  as  I  might 
have  gone  down  cellar.  The  Boyau  Poincare  — 
such  was  its  title  —  began  to  curve  and  twist  in 
the  manner  of  trenches,  and  I  came  upon  a  corner 
in  the  first  line  known  as  "Three  Dead  Men," 
because  after  the  capture  of  the  wood,  three  dead 
Germans  were  found  there  in  mysterious,  lifelike 
attitudes.  The  names  of  trenches  on  the  French 
front  often  reflect  that  deep,  native  instinct  to 
poetry  possessed  by  simple  peoples  —  the  instinct 
that  created  the  English  ballads  and  the  exquisite 
mediaeval  French  legends  of  the  saints.  Other 
trench  names  were  symbolic,  or  patriotic,  or  poli- 
tical ;  we  had  the  "  Trench  of  the  Great  Revenge," 
the  "  Trench  of  France,"  the  "  Trench  of  Aristide  " 
(meaning  Briand),  and  the  "Boulevard  Joffre." 

"3 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

Beyond  "Les  Trois  Morts,"  began  the  real  lines 
of  the  position,  and  as  I  wound  my  way  through 
them  to  the  first  lines,  the  pleasant  forest  of  au- 
tumnal branches  thinned  to  a  wood  of  trees  bare 
as  telegraph  poles.  It  had  taken.me  half  an  hour 
to  get  from  the  cook's  shelters  to  the  first  lines, 
and  during  that  time  I  had  not  heard  one  single 
explosion.  In  the  first  trench  the  men  stood  cas- 
ually by  their  posts  at  the  parapet,  their  bluish 
coats  in  an  interesting  contrast  to  the  brown  wall 
of  the  trench.  Behind  the  sentries,  who  peered 
through  the  rifle  slits  every  once  in  a  while,  flowed 
the  usual  populace  of  the  first-line  trench,  passing 
as  casually  as  if  they  were  on  a  Parisian  sidewalk, 
officers  as  miry  as  their  men,  poilus  of  the  En- 
gineer Corps  with  an  eye  to  the  state  of  the  rifle 
boxes,  and  an  old,  unshaven  soldier  in  light- 
brown  corduroy  trousers  and  blue  jacket,  who 
volunteered  the  information  that  the  Boches  had 
thrown  a  grenade  at  him  as  he  turned  the  comer 
"down  there"  — "It  didn't  go  off."  So  calm 
an  atmosphere  pervaded  the  cold,  sunny,  au- 
tumnal afternoon  that  the  idea  "the  trenches" 
took  on  the  proportions  of  a  gigantic  hoax;  we 
might  have  been  masqueraders  in  the  trenches 
after  the  war  was  over.  And  the  Germans  were 
114 


The  '^ Wood  of  Death'' 

only  seventy-five  feet  away,  across  those  bare 
poles,  stumps,  and  matted  dead  brown  leaves! 

"Attention!" 

The  atmosphere  of  the  trench  changed  in  a 
second.  Every  head  in  sight  looked  up  searchingly 
at  the  sky.  Just  over  the  trees,  distinctly  seen, 
was  a  little,  black,  cylindrical  package  somer- 
saulting through  the  air.  In  another  second  every- 
body had  calculated  the  spot  in  which  it  was 
about  to  land,  and  those  whom  it  threatened  had 
swiftly  found  shelter,  either  by  continuing  down 
the  trench  to  a  sharp  turn,  running  into  the  door 
of  an  abri  (shelter),  or  simply  snuggling  into  a 
hole  dug  in  the  side  of  the  trench.  There  was  a 
moment  of  full,  complete  silence  between  the 
time  when  everybody  had  taken  refuge  and  the 
explosion  of  the  trench  shell.  The  missile  burst 
with  that  loud  hammer  pound  made  by  a  thick- 
walled  iron  shell,  and  lay  smoking  in  the  with- 
ered leaves. 

"It  begins  —  it  begins,"  said  an  old  poilu,  toss- 
ing his  head.  "Now  we  shall  have  those  pellets 
all  afternoon." 

An  instant  after  the  burst  the  trench  relaxed; 
some  of  the  sentries  looked  back  to  see  where  the 
shell  had  fallen,  others  paid  no  attention  to  it 

"5 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

whatsoever.  Once  again  the  quiet  was  disturbed 
by  a  mufHed  boom  somewhere  ahead  of  us,  and 
everybody  calculated  and  took  refuge  exactly  as 
before.  The  shells  began  to  come,  one  on  the  heels 
of  the  other  with  alarming  frequency;  hardly  had 
one  burst  when  another  was  discovered  in  the  air. 
The  poilus,  who  had  taken  the  first  shells  as  a 
matter  of  course,  good-naturedly  even,  began  to 
get  as  cross  as  peevish  schoolboys.  It  was  de- 
cidedly too  much  of  a  good  thing.  Finally  the 
order  was  given  for  every  one  except  the  sentinels, 
who  were  standing  under  the  occasional  shelters 
of  beams  and  earth  bridged  across  the  trench,  to 
retire  to  the  abris.  I  saw  one  of  the  exposed  sen- 
tinels as  I  withdrew,  a  big,  heavily  built,  young 
fellow  with  a  face  as  placid  as  that  of  a  farm  ani- 
mal; his  rifle  leaned  against  the  earth  of  the 
trench,  and  the  shadow  of  the  shelter  fell  on  his 
expressionless  features.  The  next  sentinel  was  a 
man  in  the  late  thirties,  a  tall,  nervous  soldier 
with  a  fierce,  aggressive  face. 

The  abri  to  which  we  retired  was  about  twenty- 
five  feet  long  and  eight  feet  wide,  and  had  a  door 
at  either  end.  The  hut  had  been  dug  right  in  the 
crude,  calcareous  rock  of  Lorraine,  and  the  beams 
of  the  roof  were  deeply  set  into  these  natural 
ii6 


A   PACKAGE    FOR    KRITZ' 


The  ^^Wood  of  Death'' 

walls.  Along  the  front  wall  ran  a  corridor  about 
a  foot  wide,  and  between  this  corridor  and  the 
rear  wall  was  a  raised  platform  about  seven  feet 
wide  piled  with  hay.  Sprawled  in  this  hay,  in 
various  attitudes,  were  about  fifteen  men,  the 
squad  that  had  just  completed  its  sentry  service. 
Two  candles  hung  from  the  massive  roof  and 
flickered  in  the  draughts  between  the  two  doors, 
revealing,  in  rare  periods  of  radiance,  a  shelf 
along  the  wall  over  the  sleepers'  heads  piled  with 
canteens,  knapsacks,  and  helmets.  In  the  middle 
of  the  rock  wall  by  the  corridor  a  semicircular 
funnel  had  been  carved  out  to  serve  as  a  fireplace, 
and  at  its  base  a  flameless  fire  of  beautiful,  crum- 
bling red  brands  was  glowing.  This  hearth  cut  in 
the  living  rock  was  very  wonderful  and  beauti- 
ful. Suddenly  a  trench  shell  landed  right  on  the 
roof  of  the  abri,  shaking  little  fragments  of  stone 
down  into  the  fire  on  the  hearth.  The  soldiers, 
who  sat  hunched  up  on  the  edge  of  the  platform, 
their  feet  in  the  corridor,  gave  vent  to  a  burst  of 
anger  that  had  its  source  in  exasperation. 

"This  is  going  too  far."  — "Why  don't  they 

answer?"  —  "Are  those  dirty  cows  (the  classic 

sales  vaches)  going  to  keep  this  up  all  afternoon?  " 

—  "Really,  now,  this  is  getting  to  be  a  real  nui- 

117 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

sance."  Suddenly  two  forms  loomed  large  in 
the  left  doorway,  and  the  stolid  sentry  of  wljom  I 
have  spoken  limped  in  on  the  arm  of  an  infirm- 
ier.  Voices  murmured  in  the  obscurity,  "Who 
is  wounded?"  —  "Somebody  wounded?"  And 
dreamy-eyed  ones  sat  up  in  the  straw.  The  stolid 
one  —  he  could  not  have  been  much  over  twenty- 
one  or  two  —  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  straw 
near  the  fireplace,  his  face  showing  no  emotion, 
only  a  pallor.  He  had  a  painful  but  not  serious 
wound;  a  small  fragment  of  iron,  from  a  shell  that 
had  fallen  directly  into  the  trench,  had  lodged  in 
the  bones  of  his  foot.  He  took  off  his  big,  ugly 
shoe  and  rested  the  blood-stained  sock  on  the 
straw.  Voices  like  echoes  traveled  the  length  of 
the  shelter  —  "Is  it  thou,  Jarnac?"  —  "Art  thou 
wounded,  Jarnac?"  "Yes,"  answered  the  big 
fellow  in  a  bass  whisper.  He  was  a  peasant  of  the 
Woevre,  one  of  a  stolid,  laborious  race. 

"The  lieutenant  has  gone  to  the  telephone  shel- 
ter to  ring  up  the  batteries,"  said  the  infirmier. 
"Good,"  said  a  vibrant,  masculine  voice  some- 
where in  the  straw. 

A  shell  coming  toward  you  from  the  enemy 
makes  a  good  deal  of  noise,  but  it  is  not  to  be  com- 
pared to  the  noise  made  by  one's  own  shells  rush- 
ii8 


The  ^^  Wood  of  Death'' 

5ng  on  a  slant  just  over  one's  head  to  break  in  the 
enemy's  trenches  seventy-five  feet  away.  A  swift 
rafale  of  some  fifty  "  seventy-five  "  shells  passed 
whistling  like  the  great  wind  of  the  Apocalypse, 
which  is  to  blow  when  the  firmament  collapses. 
Looking  through  the  rifle  slit,  after  the  rafale  was 
over,  I  could  see  puffs  of  smoke  apparently  rising 
out  of  the  carpet  of  dead  leaves.  The  nervous 
man,  the  other  sentry,  held  up  his  finger  for  us 
not  to  make  the  slightest  noise  and  whispered,  — 

"I  heard  somebody  yell." 

"Where?" 

"Over  there  by  that  stump." 

We  strained  our  ears  to  catch  a  sound,  but 
heard  nothing. 

"I  heard  the  yell  plainly,"  replied  the  sen- 
try. 

The  news  seemed  to  give  some  satisfaction.  At 
any  rate,  the  Germans  stopped  their  trench  shells. 
The  quiet  hush  of  late  afternoon  was  at  hand. 
Soon  the  cook  came  down  the  trench  with  kettles 
of  hot  soup. 

Five  months  have  passed  since  I  last  saw  the 

inhabitants  of  this  abri,  the  tenants  of  the  "  Ritz- 

Marmite."  How  many  are  still  alive?    Wliat  has 

happened  to  this  fine,  brave  crowd  of  Frenchmen, 

119 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

gentlemen  all,  bons  camarades  ?  I  have  seen  them 
on  guard  in  a  heavy  winter  snowstorm,  when  the 
enemy  was  throwing  grenades  which,  exploding, 
blew  purplish-black  smudges  on  the  snow;  I  have 
seen  them  so  bemired  in  mud  and  slop  that  they 
looked  like  effigies  of  brownish  earth;  I  have 
watched  them  wading  through  communication 
trenches  that  were  veritable  canals.  And  this  is 
the  third  year  of  the  war. 

The  most  interesting  of  the  lot  mentally  was  a 
young  Socialist  named  Hippolyte.  He  was  a  sous- 
lieutenant  of  the  Engineers,  and  had  quarters  of 
his  own  in  the  rear  of  the  trenches,  where  one  was 
always  sure  to  find  books  on  social  questions  lying 
round  in  the  hay.  When  the  war  began  he  was 
just  finishing  his  law  course  at  the  University  of 
Montpellier.  A  true  son  of  the  South,  he  was 
dark,  short,  but  well  proportioned,  with  small 
hands  and  feet.  The  distinguishing  features  of  his 
countenance  were  his  eyes  and  mouth  —  the  eyes, 
eloquent,  alert,  almost  Italian;  the  mouth,  full, 
firm,  and  dogmatic.  The  great  orators  of  the  Midi 
must  have  resembled  him  in  their  youth.  He  was 
a  Socialist  and  a  pacifist  d  ouirance,  continuing 
his  dream  of  universal  fraternity  in  the  midst  of 
war.  His  work  lay  in  building  a  tunnel  under  the 

120 


The  ^'IVood  of  Death" 

Germans,  by  which  he  hoped  to  blow  part  of  the 
German  trenches,  Teutons  and  all,  sky-high. 

The  tunnel  (sape)  began  in  the  third  line,  at  a 
door  in  the  wall  of  the  trench  strongly  framed  in 
wooden  beams  the  size  of  raihoad  ties.  At  occa- 
sional intervals  along  the  passage  the  roof  was 
reinforced  by  a  frame  of  these  beams,  so  that  the 
sape  had  the  businesslike,  professional  look  of  a 
gallery  in  a  coal  mine.  Descending  steeply  to  a 
point  twelve  feet  beyond  the  entrance,  it  then 
went  at  a  gentle  incline  under  No  Man's  Land, 
and  ended  beneath  the  German  trenches.  It  was 
the  original  intention  to  blow  up  part  of  the  Ger- 
man first  Une,  but  it  being  one  day  discovered  that 
the  Germans  were  building  a  tunnel  parallel  to  the 
French  one,  it  was  decided  to  blow  up  the  French 
sape  so  that  the  explosion  would  spend  its  force 
underground,  and  cause  the  walls  of  the  German 
tunnel  to  cave  in  on  its  makers.  I  happened  to  see 
the  tunnel  the  morning  of  the  day  it  was  blown  up. 
The  French  had  stopped  working  for  fear  of  being 
overheard  by  the  Germans.  It  was  a  ticklish  situ- 
ation. Were  the  Germans  aware  of  the  French 
tunnel?  If  so,  they  would  blow  up  their  own  at 
once.  Were  they  still  continuing  their  labor? 
The  earth  of  the  French  might  burst  apart  any 

121 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

minute  and  rain  down  again  in  a  dreadful  shower 
of  clods,  stones,  and  mangled  bodies. 

Alone,  quiet,  at  the  end  of  the  passage  under  the 
German  lines  sat  an  old  poilu,  the  sentinel  of  the 
tunnel.  He  was  an  old  coal  miner  of  the  North. 
The  light  of  a  candle  showed  his  quiet,  bearded 
face,  grave  as  the  countenance  of  some  sculptured 
saint  on  the  portico  of  a  Gothic  church,  and  re- 
vealed the  wrinkles  and  lines  of  many  years  of 
labor.  The  sentinel  held  a  microphone  to  his  ears; 
the  poles  of  it  disappearing  into  the  wall  of  damp 
earth  separating  us  from  the  Boches. 

Hippolyte  whispered,  "You  hear  them?" 

The  old  man  nodded  his  head,  and  gave  the 
microphone  to  his  officer.  I  saw  Hippolyte  hs- 
ten.  Then,  without  a  word,  he  handed  it  to  me. 
All  that  I  could  hear  was  a  faint  tapping. 

"The  Boches,"  whispered  Hippolyte. 

The  French  blew  up  the  sape  early  in  the  after- 
noon, at  a  time  when  they  felt  sure  the  Germans 
were  at  work  in  their  tunnel.  I  saw  the  result  the 
next  day.  A  saucer-shaped  depression  about 
twenty-five  feet  in  diameter,  and  perhaps  two  feet 
deep,  had  appeared  in  No  Man's  Land.  Even  the 
stumps  of  two  trees  had  sunk  and  tilted. 

It  was  Hippolyte  who  had  turned  on  the  elec- 

122 


The  ^Wood  of  Death" 

tricity.  I  once  talked  the  matter  over  with  him. 
He  became  at  once  intense,  Latin,  doctrinaire. 

"How  do  you  reconcile  your  theories  of  fra- 
ternity to  what  you  have  to  do?" 

"I  do  not  have  to  reconcile  my  theories  to  my 
oflSce;  I  am  furthering  my  theories." 

"How  so?" 

"By  combating  the  Boches.  Without  them  we 
might  have  realized  our  idea  of  universal  peace 
and  fraternity.  Voila  I'ennemi!  The  race  is  a  poi- 
sonous race,  serpents,  massacreurs!  I  wish  I  could 
smother  as  many  of  them  every  day  as  I  did  yes- 
terday." 

During  my  service  I  did  not  meet  another  sol- 
dier whose  hatred  of  the  Germans  was  compara- 
ble to  that  of  this  advocate  of  universal  love. 

I  left  the  trenches  just  at  dusk.  Above  the 
dreadful  depression  in  No  Man's  Land  shone  a 
bronzy  sky  against  which  the  trees  raised  their 
haggard  silhouettes.  There  was  hardly  a  sound  in 
the  whole  length  of  The  Wood.  A  mist  came 
up  making  haloes  round  the  rising  winter  stars. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   GERMANS   ATTACK 

The  schoolmaster  {instituteur)  and  the  school- 
mistress {institutrice)  of  Montauville  were  a  mar- 
ried couple,  and  had  a  flat  of  four  rooms  on  the 
second  story  of  the  schoolhouse.  The  kitchen  of 
this  flat  had  been  struck  by  a  shell,  and  was  still  a 
mess  of  plaster,  bits  of  stone,  and  glass,  and  a 
fragment  had  torn  clear  through  the  sooty  bottom 
of  a  copper  saucepan  still  hanging  on  the  wall. 
In  one  of  the  rooms,  else  quite  bare  of  furniture, 
was  an  upright  piano.  Sometimes  while  stationed 
at  Montauville,  I  whiled  away  the  waits  between 
calls  to  the  trenches  in  playing  this  instrument. 

It  was  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
thus  far  not  a  single  call  had  come  in.  The  sun 
was  shining  very  brightly  in  a  sky  washed  clear 
by  a  night  of  rain,  the  morning  mists  were  rising 
from  the  wood,  and  up  and  down  the  very  muddy 
street  walked  little  groups  of  soldiers.  I  drew  up 
the  rickety  stool  and  began  to  play  the  waltz 
from  "The  Count  of  Luxembourg."  In  a  short 
time  I  heard  the  sound  of  tramping  on  the  stairs 
124 


The  Germans  Attack 

and  voices.  In  came  three  poilus  —  a  pale  boy 
with  a  weary,  gentle  expression  in  his  rather  faded 
blue  eyes;  a  dark,  heavy  fellow  of  twenty-five  or 
SLX,  with  big  wrists,  big,  muscular  hands,  and  a 
rather  unpleasant,  lowering  face;  and  a  little, 
middle-aged  man  with  straightforward,  friendly 
hazel  eyes  and  a  pointed  beard.  The  pale,  boy- 
ish one  carried  a  violin  made  from  a  cigar  box  un- 
der his  arm,  just  such  a  violin  as  the  darkies  make 
down  South.  This  violin  was  very  beautifully 
made,  and  decorated  with  a  rustic  design.  I 
stopped  playing. 

''Don't,  don't,"  cried  the  dark,  big  fellow;  "we 
have  n't  heard  any  music  for  a  long  time.  Please 
keep  on.  Jacques,  here,  will  accompany  you." 

"I  never  heard  the  waltz,"  said  the  violinist; 
"  but  if  you  play  it  over  for  me  once  or  twice,  I  '11 
try  to  get  the  air  —  if  you  would  like  to  have  me 
to,"  he  added  with  a  shy,  gentle  courtesy. 

So  I  played  the  rather  banal  waltz  again,  till 
the  lad  caught  the  tune.  He  hit  it  amazingly  well, 
and  his  ear  was  unusually  true.  The  dark  one  had 
been  in  Canada  and  was  hungry  for  American 
rag-time.  "'The  Good  Old  Summer  Time'  — 
you  know  that?  'Harrigan'  —  you  know  that?" 
he  said  in  English.   The  rag-time  of  "Harrigan" 

125 


A  Volujiteer  Poilu 

floated  out  on  the  street  of  Montauville.  But  I 
did  not  care  to  play  things  which  could  have  no 
violin  obligate,  so  I  began  to  play  what  I  remem- 
bered of  waltzes  dear  to  every  Frenchman's  heart 
—  the  tunes  of  the  "Merry  Widow."  "Sylvia" 
went  oflf  with  quite  a  dash.  The  concert  was  get- 
ting popular.  Somebody  wanted  to  send  for  a 
certain  Alphonse  who  had  an  occarina.  Two  other 
poilus,  men  in  the  forties,  came  up,  their  dark- 
brown,  horseshoe  beards  making  them  look  like 
brothers.  Side  by  side  against  the  faded  paper  on 
the  sunny  wall  they  stood,  surveying  us  content- 
edly. The  violinist,  who  turned  out  to  be  a  Nor- 
man, played  a  solo  —  some  music-hall  fantasy, 
I  imagine.  The  next  number  was  the  ever  popu- 
lar "Tipperaree,"  which  every  single  poilu  in  the 
French  army  has  learned  to  sing  in  a  kind  of  Eng- 
lish. Our  piano- violin  duet  hit  off  this  piece  even 
better  than  the  "Merry  Widow."  I  thanked 
Heaven  that  I  was  not  called  on  to  translate  it,  a 
feat  frequently  demanded  of  the  American  driv- 
ers. The  song  is  silly  enough  in  the  King's  Eng- 
lish, but  in  lucid,  exact  French,  it  sinks  to  positive 
imbecility. 

"You  play,  don't  you?"  said  the  violinist  to 
the  small  bearded  man. 

126 


The  Germans  Attack 

"A  little,"  he  replied  modestly. 

"Please  play." 

The  Httle  man  sat  down  at  the  piano,  meditated 
a  minute,  and  began  to  play  the  rich  chords  of 
Rachmaninof's  "Prelude."  He  got  about  half 
through,  -when  Zip-bang  I  a  small  shell  burst  down 
the  street.  The  dark  fellow  threw  open  the 
French  window.  The  poilus  were  scurrying  to 
shelter.  The  pianist  continued  with  the  "Pre- 
lude." 

Zip-bang !  Zip-bang  !  Zshh  —  Bang  —  Bang. 
Bang-Bang! 

The  piano  stopped.  Everybody  listened.  The 
village  was  still  as  death.  Suddenly  down  the 
street  came  the  rattle  of  a  volley  of  rifle  shots. 
Over  this  sound  rose  the  choked,  metallic  notes 
of  a  bugle-call.  The  rifle  shots  continued.  The 
ominous  popping  of  machine  guns  resounded. 
The  village,  recovering  from  its  silence,  filled 
with  murmurs.  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  went 
some  more  shells.  The  same  knowledge  took  defi- 
nite shape  in  our  minds. 

"An  attack!" 

The  violinist,  clutching  his  instrument,  hurried 
down  the  stairs  followed  by  all  the  others,  leaving 
the  chords  of  the  uncompleted  "  Prelude  "  to  hang 
127 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

in  the  startled  air.  Shells  were  popping  every- 
where —  crashes  of  smoke  and  violence  —  in  the 
roads,  in  the  fields,  and  overhead.  The  Germans 
were  trying  to  isolate  the  few  detachments  en 
repos  in  the  village,  and  prevent  reinforcements 
coming  from  Dieulouard  or  any  other  place.  To 
this  end  all  the  roads  between  Pont-a-Mousson 
and  the  trenches,  and  the  roads  leading  directly 
to  the  trenches,  were  being  shelled. 

"Go  at  once  to  Posted" 

The  winding  road  lay  straight  ahead,  and  just 
at  the  end  of  the  village  street,  the  Germans  had 
established  a  tir  de  barrage.  This  meant  that  a 
shell  was  falling  at  that  particular  point  about 
once  every  fifty  seconds.  I  heard  two  rafales 
break  there  as  I  was  grinding  up  the  machine. 
Up  the  slope  of  the  Montauville  hill  came  several 
of  the  other  drivers.  Tyler,  of  New  York,  a  com- 
rade who  united  remarkable  bravery  to  the  kind- 
est of  hearts,  followed  close  behind  me,  also  evi- 
dently bound  for  Poste  C.  German  bullets,  fired 
wildly  from  the  ridge  of  The  Wood  over  the 
French  trenches,  sang  across  the  Montauville 
valley,  lodging  in  the  trees  of  Puvenelle  behind  us 
with  a  vicious  Ispt;  shells  broke  here  and  there 
on  the  stretch  leading  to  the  Quart-en-Reserve, 
128 


The  Germans  Attack 

throwing  the  small  rocks  of  the  road  surfacing 
wildly  in  every  direction.  The  French  batteries 
to  our  left  were  firing  at  the  Germans,  the  Ger- 
man batteries  were  firing  at  the  French  trenches 
and  the  roads,  and  the  machine  guns  rattled 
ceaselessly.  I  saw  the  poilus  hurrying  up  the 
muddy  roads  of  the  slope  of  the  Bois-le-PrStre 
—  vague  masses  of  moving  blue  on  the  brown 
ways.  A  storm  of  shells  was  breaking  round  cer- 
tain points  in  the  road  and  particularly  at  the 
entrance  to  The  Wood.  I  wondered  what  had 
become  of  the  audience  at  the  concert.  Various 
sounds,  transit  of  shells,  bursting  of  shells,  crash- 
ing of  near-by  cannon,  and  rat-tat-tat-tat  I  of  mi- 
trailleuses played  the  treble  to  a  roar  formed  of 
echoes  and  cadences  —  the  roar  of  battle.  The 
Wood  of  Death  (Le  Bois  de  la  Mort)  was  sing- 
ing again. 

That  day's  attack  was  an  attempt  by  the  Ger- 
mans to  take  back  from  the  French  the  eastern 
third  of  the  Quart-en-Reserve  and  the  rest  of  the 
adjoining  ridge  half  hidden  in  the  shattered  trees. 
At  the  top  of  the  plateau,  by  the  rise  in  the  moor- 
land I  described  in  the  preceding  chapter,  I  had 
an  instant's  view  of  the  near-by  battle,  for  the 
focus  was  hardly  more  than  four  hundred  yards 
129 


A  Volunteei-  Poilii 

away.  There  was  a  glimpse  of  human  beings  in 
the  Quart  —  soldiers  in  green,  soldiers  in  blue 
—  the  very  fact  that  anybody  was  to  be  seen 
there  was  profoundly  stirring.  They  were  fighting 
in  No  Man's  Land.  Tyler  and  I  watched  for  a 
second,  wondering  what  scenes  of  agony,  of  hero- 
ism, of  despair  were  being  enacted  in  that  dread- 
ful field  by  the  ruined  wood. 

We  hurried  our  wounded  to  the  hospital,  pass- 
ing on  our  way  detachments  of  soldiers  rushing 
toward  The  Wood  from  the  villages  of  the  region. 
Three  or  four  big  shells  had  just  fallen  in  Dieu- 
louard,  and  the  village  was  deserted  and  horribly 
still.  The  wind  carried  the  roar  of  the  attack  to 
our  ears.  In  three  quarters  of  an  hour,  I  was  back 
again  at  the  same  moorland  poste,  to  which 
an  order  of  our  commander  had  attached  me. 
Montauville  was  full  of  wounded.  I  had  three 
on  stretchers  inside,  one  beside  me  on  the  seat, 
and  two  others  on  the  front  mudguards.  And 
The  Wood  continued  to  sing.  From  Montau- 
ville I  could  hear  the  savage  yells  and  cries  which 
accompanied  the  fighting. 

Half  an  hour  after  the  beginning  of  the  attack, 
the  war  invaded  the  sky,  with  the  coming  of  the 
German  reconnoitering  aeroplanes.  One  went  to 
130 


The  Germans  Attack 

watch  the  roads  leading  to  The  Wood  along  the 
plateau,  one  went  to  watch  the  Dieulouard  road, 
and  the  other  hovered  over  the  scene  of  the  com- 
bat. The  sky  was  soon  dotted  with  the  puffs  of 
smoke  left  by  the  exploding  shells  of  the  special 
anti-aircraft  "  seventy-fives."  These  puffs  blos- 
somed from  a  pin-point  of  light  to  a  vaporous, 
gray-white  puff-ball  about  the  size  of  the  full 
moon,  and  then  dissolved  in  the  air  or  blew  about 
in  streaks  and  wisps.  These  cloudlets,  fired  at  an 
aviator  flying  along  a  certain  line,  often  were 
gathered  by  the  eye  into  arrangements  resembling 
constellations.  The  three  machines  were  very 
high,  and  had  a  likeness  to  little  brown  and  sil- 
ver insects. 

The  Boche  watching  the  conflict  appeared  to 
hang  almost  immobile  over  the  Quart.  With  a 
striking  suddenness,  another  machine  appeared 
behind  him  and  above  him.  So  unexpected  was 
the  approach  of  this  second  aeroplane  that  its 
appearance  had  a  touch  of  the  miraculous.  It 
might  have  been  created  at  that  very  moment  in 
the  sky.  The  Frenchman  —  for  it  was  an  aviator 
from  the  pare  at  Toul,  since  killed  at  Verdun, 
poor  fellow  —  swooped  beneath  his  antagonist 
and  fired  his  machine  gun  at  him.  The  German 

131 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

answered  with  two  shots  of  a  carbine.  The 
Frenchman  fired  again.  Suddenly  the  German 
machine  flopped  to  the  right  and  swooped  down; 
it  then  flopped  to  the  left,  the  tail  of  the  ma- 
chine flew  up,  and  the  apparatus  fell,  not  so 
swiftly  as  one  might  expect,  down  a  thousand 
feet  into  The  Wood.  When  I  saw  the  wreckage, 
a  few  days  afterwards,  it  looked  like  the  spilt  con- 
tents of  a  waste-paper  basket,  and  the  aviators,  a 
pilot  and  an  observer,  had  had  to  be  collected 
from  all  over  the  landscape.  The  French  buried 
them  with  full  military  honors. 

Thanks  to  the  use  of  a  flame  machine,  the 
Germans  succeeded  in  regaining  the  part  of  the 
ridge  they  had  lost,  but  the  French  made  it  so  hot 
for  them  that  they  abandoned  it,  and  the  con- 
tested trenches  now  lie  in  No  Man's  Land.  All 
that  night  the  whole  Wood  was  illuminated, 
trench  light  after  trench  light  rising  over  the  dark 
branches.  There  would  be  a  rocket  like  the  trail 
of  bronze-red  powder  sparks  hanging  for  an  in- 
stant in  the  sky,  then  a  loud  Plop!  and  the  French 
light  would  spread  out  its  parachute  and  sail 
slowly  down  the  sky  toward  the  river.  The  Ger- 
man lights  {fusees  eclair  antes),  cartridges  of  mag- 
nesium fired  from  a  gun  resembling  a  shotgun, 

132 


The  Germans  Attack 

burned  only  during  their  dazzling  trajectory.  At 
midnight  the  sky  darkened  with  low,  black  rain 
clouds,  upon  whose  surface  the  constant  cannon 
fire  flashed  in  pools  of  violet-white  light.  Coming 
down  from  the  plateau  at  two  in  the  morning,  I 
could  see  sharp  jabs  of  cannon  fire  for  thirty  miles 
along  the  front  on  the  other  side  of  the  Moselle. 

Just  after  this  attack  a  doctor  of  the  army  serv- 
ice was  walking  through  the  trenches  in  which  the 
French  had  made  their  stand.  He  noticed  some- 
thing oddly  skewered  to  a  tree.  He  knocked  it 
down  with  a  stone,  and  a  human  heart  fell  at  his 
feet. 

The  most  interesting  question  of  the  whole 
business  is,  "How  do  the  soldiers  stand  it?"  At 
the  beginning  of  my  own  service,  I  thought  Pont- 
a-Mousson,  with  its  ruins,  its  danger,  and  its 
darkness,  the  most  awful  place  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  After  a  Uttle  while,  I  grew  accustomed  to 
the  decor,  and  when  the  time  came  for  me  to  leave 
it,  I  went  with  as  much  regret  as  if  I  were  leaving 
the  friendliest,  most  peaceful  of  towns.  First  the 
decor,  growing  familiar,  lost  the  keener  edges  of 
its  horror,  and  then  the  life  of  the  front  —  the  vio- 
lence, the  destruction,  the  dying  and  the  dead  — 
all  became  casual,  part  of  the  day's  work.   A 

133 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

human  being  is  profoundly  affected  by  those 
about  him;  thus,  when  a  new  soldier  finds  himself 
for  the  first  time  in  a  trench,  he  is  sustained  by  the 
attitude  of  the  veterans.  Violence  becomes  the 
commonplace;  shells,  gases,  and  flames  are  the 
things  that  life  is  made  of.  The  war  is  another 
lesson  in  the  power  of  the  species  to  adapt  itself  to 
circumstances.  When  this  power  of  adaptability 
has  been  reinforced  by  a  tenacious  national  will 
"to  see  the  thing  through,"  men  will  stand  hell 
itself.  The  slow,  dogged  determination  of  the 
British  cannot  be  more  powerful  than  the  resolu- 
tion of  the  French.  Their  decision  to  continue  at 
all  costs  has  been  reached  by  a  purely  intellectual 
process,  and  to  enforce  it,  they  have  called  upon 
those  ancient  foundations  of  the  French  charac- 
ter, the  sober  reasonableness  and  unbending  will 
they  inherit  from  Rome. 

And  a  new  religion  has  risen  in  the  trenches,  a 
faith  much  more  akin  to  Mahomet  than  to  Christ. 
It  is  a  fatalism  of  action.  The  soldier  finds  his  sal- 
vation in  the  belief  that  nothing  will  happen  to 
him  until  his  hour  comes,  and  the  logical  corollary 
of  this  belief,  that  it  does  no  good  to  worry,  is  his 
rock  of  ages.  It  is  a  curious  thing  to  see  poilus  — 
peasants,  artisans,  scholars  —  completely  in  the 

134 


The  Geimans  Attack 

grip  of  this  philosophy.  There  has  been  a  certain 
return  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  for  which  several 
reasons  exist,  the  greatest  being  that  the  war  has 
made  men  turn  to  spiritual  things.  Only  an 
animal  could  be  confronted  with  the  pageant  of 
heroism,  the  glory  of  sacrifice,  and  the  presence 
of  Death,  and  not  be  moved  to  a  contempla- 
tion of  the  fountain-head  of  these  sublime  mys- 
teries. But  it  is  the  upper  class  which  in  par- 
ticular has  returned  to  the  Church.  Before  the 
war,  rationalist  and  genial  skeptic,  the  educated 
Frenchman  went  to  church  because  it  was  the 
thing  to  do,  and  because  non-attendance  would 
weaken  an  institution  which  the  world  was  by  no 
means  ready  to  lay  aside.  This  same  educated 
Frenchman,  brought  face  to  face  with  the  mys- 
tery of  human  existence,  has  felt  a  real  need 
of  spiritual  support,  and  consequently  returned 
to  the  Church  of  his  fathers.  The  religious  revival 
is  a  return  of  upper-class  prodigals  to  the  fold,  and 
a  rekindling  of  the  chilled  brands  of  the  faith  of 
the  amiably  skeptical.  The  great  mass  of  the 
nation  has  felt  this  spiritual  force,  but  because  the 
mass  of  the  nation  was  always  Catholic,  nothing 
much  has  changed.  I  failed  to  find  any  trace  of 
conversions  among  the  still  hostile  working  men 

135 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

of  the  towns,  and  the  bred-in-the-bone  Socialists. 
The  rallying  of  the  conservative  classes  about  the 
Cross  is  also  due  to  the  fact  that  the  war  has  ex- 
posed the  mediocrity  and  sterile  windiness  of  the 
old  socialistic  governments;  this  misgovernment 
the  upper  classes  have  determined  to  end  once 
they  return  from  the  trenches,  and  remembering 
that  the  Church  of  Rome  was  the  enemy  of  the 
past  administrations,  cannot  help  regarding  her 
with  a  certain  friendliness.  But  this  issue  of  past 
misgovernment  will  be  fought  out  on  purely  secu- 
lar grounds,  and  the  Church  will  be  only  a  sym- 
pathizer behind  the  fray.  The  manner  in  which 
the  French  priests  have  fought  and  died  is  worthy 
of  the  admiration  of  the  world.  Never  in  the  his- 
tory of  any  country  has  the  national  religion  been 
so  closely  enmeshed  in  the  national  life.  The 
older  clergy,  as  a  rule,  have  been  affected  to  the 
medical  services  of  the  front,  serving  as  hospital 
orderlies  and  stretcher-bearers,  but  the  younger 
priests  have  been  put  right  into  the  army  and  are 
fighting  to-day  as  common  soldiers.  There  are 
hundreds  of  officer-priests  —  captains  and  lieu- 
tenants of  the  regular  army. 

But  the  real  religion  of  the  front  is  the  philos- 
ophy of  Mahomet.    Life  will  end  only  when 
136 


The  Germans  Attack 

Death  has  been  decreed  by  Fate,  and  the  Boches 
are  the  unbelievers.  After  all,  Islam  in  its  great 
days  was  a  virile  faith,  the  faith  of  a  race  of 
soldiers. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   TOWN  IN   THE  TRENCHES 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  German  plan  of 
campaign  was  to  take  France  on  the  flank  by 
marching  through  Belgium,  and  once  the  success 
of  this  northern  venture  assured,  strike  at  the  Ver- 
dun-BeKort  line  which  had  baffled  them  in  the 
first  instance.  Had  they  not  lost  the  battle  of  the 
Marne,  this  second  venture  might  have  proved 
successful,  for  the  body  of  the  French  army  was 
fighting  in  the  north,  and  the  remaining  troops 
would  have  been  discouraged  by  the  capture  of 
Paris.  On  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  the  Marne  the 
campaign  seeming  to  be  well  in  hand  in  the 
north,  a  German  invasion  of  Lorraine  began,  one 
army  striking  at  the  defenses  of  the  great  plateau 
which  slopes  from  the  Vosges  to  the  Moselle,  and 
the  other  attempting  to  ascend  the  valley  of  the 
river.  It  was  this  second  army  which  entered 
Pont-a-Mousson. 

Immediately  following  the  declaration  of  hos- 
tilities the  troops  who  had  been  quartered  in  the 
town  were  withdrawn,  and  the  town  was  left  open 

138 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

to  the  enemy  who,  going  very  cautiously,  was  on 
his  way  from  Metz.  For  several  weeks  in  August, 
this  city,  almost  directly  on  the  frontier,  saw  no 
soldiers,  French  or  German.  It  was  a  time  of  dra- 
matic suspense.  The  best  recital  of  it  I  ever  heard 
came  from  the  lips  of  the  housekeeper  of  Wisteria 
Villa,  a  splendid,  brave  French  woman  who  had 
never  left  her  post.  She  was  short,  of  a  clear, 
tanned  complexion,  and  always  had  her  hair 
tightly  rolled  up  in  a  little  classic  pug.  She  was  as 
fearless  of  shells  as  a  soldier  in  the  trenches,  and 
once  went  to  a  deserted  orchard,  practically  in 
the  trenches,  to  get  some  apples  for  Messieurs  les 
Americains.  When  asked  why  she  did  not  get 
them  at  a  safer  place,  she  replied  that  she  did  not 
have  to  pay  for  these  apples  as  the  land  belonged 
to  her  father!  Her  ear  for  shells  was  the  most 
accurate  of  the  neighborhood,  and  when  a  deafen- 
ing crash  would  shake  the  kettles  on  the  stove  and 
rattle  the  teacups,  she  could  tell  you  exactly  from 
what  direction  it  had  come  and  the  probable  cali- 
ber. I  remember  one  morning  seeing  her  wash 
dishes  while  the  Germans  were  shelling  the  corner 
I  have  already  described.  The  window  over  the 
sink  opened  directly  on  the  dangerous  area,  and 
she  might  have  been  killed  any  minute  by  a  flying 

139 


A  Volu7iteer  Poilu 

Sdat.  Standing  with  her  hands  in  the  soapy 
water,  or  wiping  dry  the  hideous  blue-and-white 
dinner  service  of  Wisteria  Villa,  she  never  even 
bothered  to  look  up  to  see  where  the  shells  were 
landing.  Two  "seventy-sevens"  went  ofiF  with  a 
horrid  pop;  "Those  are  only  'seventy-sevens,'" 
she  murmured  as  if  to  herself.  A  fearful  swish  was 
next  heard  and  the  house  rocked  to  the  din  of  an 
explosion.  "That's  a  'two  hundred  and  ten'  — 
the  rogues — oh,  the  rogues! "  she  exclaimed  in  the 
tone  she  might  have  used  in  scolding  a  depraved 
boy. 

At  night,  when  the  kitchen  was  cleared  up,  she 
sat  douTi  to  write  her  daily  letter  to  her  soldier 
son,  and  once  this  duty  finished,  liked  nothing 
better  than  a  friendly  chat.  She  knew  the  history 
of  Pont-a-Mousson  and  Montauville  and  the 
inhabitants  thereof  by  heart;  she  had  tales  to  tell 
of  the  shrewdness  of  the  peasants  and  diverting 
anecdotes  of  their  manners  and  morals.  These 
stories  she  told  very  well  and  picturesquely. 

"The  first  thing  we  saw  was  the  President's 
poster  saying  not  to  be  alarmed,  that  the  meas- 
ures of  military  preparation  were  required  by  cir- 
cumstances (les  evenements)  and  did  not  mean 
war.  Then  over  this  bill  the  maire  posted  a  notice 
140 


The  Town  in  the  Trettches 

that  in  case  of  a  real  mobilization  (une  mobilisa- 
tion serieuse)  they  would  ring  the  tocsin.  At  eleven 
o'clock  the  tocsin  rang,  oh,  la  la,  monsieur,  what  a 
fracas!  All  the  bells  in  the  town,  Saint-Martin, 
Saint-Laurent,  the  hotel  de  ville.  Immediately 
all  our  troops  went  away.  We  did  not  want  to  see 
them  go.  'We  shall  be  back  again,'  they  said. 
They  liked  Pont-a-Mousson.  Such  good  young 
fellows!  The  butcher's  wife  has  heard  that  only 
fifty-five  of  the  six  hundred  who  were  here  are 
aUve.  They  were  of  the  active  forces  (de  I'active). 
A  great  many  people  followed  the  soldiers.  So  for 
two  weeks  we  were  left  all  alone,  wondering  what 
was  to  become  of  us.  And  all  the  time  we  heard 
frightful  stories  about  the  villages  beyond  Nancy. 
On  the  nth  of  August  we  heard  cannon  for  the 
first  time,  and  on  the  12th  and  the  14th  we  were 
bombarded.  On  the  4th  of  September,  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  evening,  the  bells  began  to  ring 
again.  Everybody  ran  out  to  find  the  reason.  Les 
Allemands  —  they  were  not  then  called  Boches  — 
were  coming.  Baoum !  went  the  bridge  over  the 
Moselle.  Everybody  went  into  their  houses,  so 
that  the  Germans  came  down  streets  absolutely 
deserted.  I  peeked  from  my  window  blind.  The 
Boches  came  down  the  road  from  Norroy,  les 
141 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

Uhlans,  the  infantry  —  how  big  and  ugly  they  all 
were.  And  their  oflScers  were  so  stiff  (raide).  They 
were  not  like  our  bons  petits  soldats  Frangais.  In 
the  morning  I  went  out  to  get  some  bread. 

*"Eh  la,  good  woman'  (bonne  femme),  said  a 
grand  Boche  to  me. 

'* '  What  do  you  want? '  said  I. 

"'Are  there  any  soldats  franjais  in  the  town?' 
said  the  Boche. 

"  *  How  should  I  know? '  I  answered. 

"'You  do  not  want  to  tell,  good  woman.' 

"'I  do  not  know.' 

"'Are there  any  francs-tireurs  (civilian  snipers) 
in  this  town? ' 

"'Don't  bother  me ;  I  'm  going  for  some  bread.' 

"During  the  night  all  the  clocks  had  been 
changed  to  German  time.  Many  of  the  Boches 
spoke  French.  There  were  Alsatians  and  Lorrains 
who  did  not  like  the  fracas  at  all.  Yes,  the  Boches 
behaved  themselves  all  right  at  Pont-a-Mousson 
—  there  were  some  vulgarities  (grossieretes).  One 
of  the  soldiers,  a  big  blond,  went  down  the  street 
wearing  an  ostrich  feather  hat  and  a  woman's 
union  suit  and  chemise.  It  was  a  scandale.  But 
uncle  laughed  to  kill  himself;  he  was  peeping  out 
through  the  blinds.  Right  in  front  of  my  door 
142 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

were  ten  cannon,  and  all  the  street  was  full  of 
artillery.  Well  we  had  four  days  of  this,  hearing 
never  a  word  from  the  French  side. 

"On  the  night  of  the  gth  I  heard  a  good  deal  of 
noise,  and  somebody  woke  up  the  Boches  sous- 
officiers  who  were  quartered  in  a  house  across  the 
street.  I  saw  lights  and  heard  shouts.  I  was  peep- 
ing out  of  my  window  all  the  time.  The  dark 
street  filled  with  soldiers.  I  saw  their  ofl5cers 
lashing  them  to  make  them  hurry.  They  har- 
nessed the  artillery  horses  to  the  guns,  and  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning  there  was  not  a  single 
Boche  in  Pont-a-Mousson.  They  had  all  gone 
away  in  the  night,  taking  with  them  the  German 
flag  on  the  city  hall.  You  know,  monsieur,  on  the 
night  of  the  gth  they  received  news  of  the  battle 
of  the  Marne. 

"For  five  days  more  we  saw  neither  Franjais 
nor  Boches.  Finally  some  French  dragoons  came 
down  the  road  from  Dieulouard,  and  little  by 
little  other  soldiers  came  too.  But,  helas,  mon- 
sieur, the  Boches  were  waiting  for  them  in  the 
Bois-le-Pr^tre." 

Such  was  the  way  that  Pont-a-Mousson  did  not 
become  Mussenbruck.  The  episode  is  an  agree- 
able interlude  of  decency  in  the  history  of  German 

143 


A  Volmiteer  Poilu 

occupations,  for  that  atrocities  were  perpetrated 
in  Nomeny,  just  across  the  river,  is  beyond  ques- 
tion. I  have  talked  with  survivors.  At  Pont-k- 
Mousson  everything  was  orderly;  six  miles  to  the 
east,  houses  were  burned  over  the  heads  of  the 
inhabitants,  and  women  and  children  brutally 
massacred. 

I  best  remember  the  little  city  as  it  was  one 
afternoon  in  early  December.  The  population  of 
17,000  had  then  shrunk  to  about  900,  and  only  a 
little  furtive  life  lingered  in  the  town.  My  prome- 
nade began  at  the  river-bank  by  the  wooden  foot- 
bridge crossing  from  the  shore  to  the  remaining 
arches  of  the  graceful  eighteenth-century  stone 
bridge  blown  up  in  September,  1914.  There  is 
always  something  melancholy  about  a  ruined 
bridge,  perhaps  because  the  structure  symbolizes 
a  patient  human  victory  over  the  material  world. 
There  was  something  intensely  tragic  in  the  view 
of  the  wrecked  quarter  of  Saint-Martin,  seen 
across  the  deep,  greenish,  wintry  river,  and  in  the 
great  curve  of  the  broad  flood  sullenly  hurrying  to 
Metz.  At  the  end  of  the  bridge,  ancient  and  gray, 
rose  the  two  round  towers  of  the  fifteenth-century 
parish  church,  with  that  blind,  solemn  look  to 
them  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  possess,  and 
144 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

beyond  this  edifice,  a  tile-roofed  town  and  the 
great  triangular  hill  called  the  Mousson.  It  was 
dangerous  to  cross  the  bridge,  because  German 
snipers  occasionally  fired  at  it,  so  I  contented  my- 
self with  looking  down  the  river.  Beyond  the 
Bois-le-Pretre,  the  next  ridge  to  rise  from  the 
river  was  a  grassy  spur  bearing  the  village  of  Nor- 
roy  on  its  back.  You  could  see  the  hill,  only  four 
kilometres  away,  the  brown  walls  of  the  village, 
the  red  roofs,  and  sometimes  the  glint  of  sunlight 
on  a  window;  but  for  us  the  village  might  have 
been  on  another  planet.  All  social  and  economic 
relations  with  Norroy  had  ceased  since  Septem- 
ber, 1914,  and  reflecting  on  this  fact,  the  invisible 
wall  of  the  trenches  became  more  than  a  mere 
military  wall,  became  a  barrier  to  every  human 
relation  and  peaceful  tie. 

A  sentry  stood  by  the  ruined  bridge,  a  small, 
well-knit  man  with  beautiful  silver-gray  hair,  blue 
eyes,  and  pink  cheeks;  his  uniform  was  excep- 
tionally clean,  and  he  appeared  to  be  some  decent 
burgher  torn  from  his  customary  life.  I  fell  into 
conversation  with  him.  He  recollected  that  his 
father,  a  veteran  of  1870,  had  prophesied  the 
present  war. 

** '  We  shall  see  them  again,  the  spiked  helmets 

145 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

(les  casques  ^  pointe),'  said  my  father  —  'we  shall 
see  them  again.' 

"'Why?' I  asked  him. 

"'Because  they  have  eaten  of  us,  and  will  be 
hungry  once  more.'" 

The  principal  street  of  the  town  led  from  this 
bridge  to  a  great  square,  and  continued  straight 
on  toward  Maidieres  and  Montauville.  The  side- 
walks around  this  square  were  in  arcades  under 
the  houses,  for  the  second  story  of  every  building 
projected  for  seven  or  eight  feet  over  the  first  and 
rested  on  a  line  of  arches  at  the  edge  of  the  street. 
To  avoid  damage  from  shells  bursting  in  the  open 
space,  every  one  of  these  arcades,  and  there  were 
perhaps  a  hundred  all  told,  had  been  plugged 
with  sandbags,  so  that  the  square  had  an  odd, 
blind  look.  A  little  life  flickered  in  the  damp,  dark 
alleys  behind  these  obstructions.  There  was  a 
tobacco  shop,  kept  by  two  pretty  young  women 
whom  the  younger  soldiers  were  always  jollying, 
a  wineshop,  a  tailorshop,  and  a  bookstore,  always 
well  supplied  with  the  great  Parisian  weeklies, 
which  one  found  later  in  odd  comers  of  shelters 
in  the  trenches.  Occasionally  a  soldier  bought 
a  serious  book  when  it  was  to  be  found  in  the 
dusty  files  of  the  "Collection  Nelson";  I  remem- 
146 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

ber  seeing  a  young  lieutenant  of  artillery  buying 
Segur's  "Histoire  de  la  Grande  Armee  en  1812," 
and  another  taking  Flaubert's  "Un  coeur  sim- 
ple." But  the  military  life,  roughly  lived,  and 
shared  with  simple  people,  appears  to  make  even 
the  wisest  boyish,  and  after  a  while  at  the  front 
the  intellect  will  not  read  anything  intellectual. 
It  simply  won't,  perhaps  because  it  can't.  The 
soldier  mind  delights  in  rough,  genial,  and  sim- 
ple jokes.  A  sergeant,  whom  I  knew  to  be  a 
distinguished  young  scholar  in  civilian  life,  was 
always  throwing  messages  wrapped  round  a 
stone  into  the  German  trenches;  the  messages 
were  killingly  funny,  amiably  indecent,  and  very 
jejune.  Invariably  they  provoked  a  storm  of 
grenades,  and  sometimes  epistles  in  the  same 
vein  from  the  Boches.  In  spite  of  the  vicious 
pang  of  the  grenades,  there  was  an  absurd  "  Boys- 
will-be-boys  "  air  to  the  whole  performance.  Con- 
versation, however,  did  not  sink  to  this  boyish 
level,  and  the  rag-tag  and  bob-tail  of  one's  culti- 
vation found  its  outlet  in  speech. 

At  the  end  of  this  street  was  the  railroad  cross- 
ing, the  passage  d,  niveau,  and  the  station  in  a 
jungle  of  dead  grass  and  brambles.  Like  the 
bridge,  its  rustiness  and  weediness  was  a  dreadful 

147 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

symbol  of  the  cessation  of  human  activity,  and 
the  blue  enamel  signpost  lettered  in  white  with 
the  legend,  "Metz  —  32  kilometres,"  was  another 
reminder  of  the  town  to  which  the  French  aspired 
with  all  the  fierce  intensity  of  crusaders  longing 
for  Jerusalem.  It  was  impossible  to  get  away  from 
the  omnipresence  of  the  name  of  the  fated  city  — 
it  stared  at  you  from  obscure  street  corners,  and 
was  to  be  found  on  the  covers  of  printed  books 
and  post-cards.  I  saw  the  city  once  from  the  top 
of  the  hill  of  the  Mousson;  its  cathedral  towers 
pierced  the  blue  mists  of  the  brown  moorlands, 
and  it  appeared  phantasmal  and  tremendously 
distant.  Yet  for  those  towers  countless  men  had 
died,  were  dying,  would  die.  A  French  soldier  who 
had  made  the  ascent  with  me  pointed  out  Metz 
the  much  desired. 

"Are  you  going  to  get  it?"  I  asked.  "Perhaps 
so,"  he  replied  gravely.  "After  so  many  sacri- 
fices." (Apres  tant  de  sacrifices.)  He  made  no 
gesture,  but  I  know  that  his  vision  included  the 
soldiers'  cemetery  at  the  foot  of  the  Mousson  hill. 
It  lay,  a  rust-colored  field,  on  the  steep  hillside 
just  at  the  border  of  the  town,  and  was  new,  raw, 
and  dreadful.  The  guardian  of  the  cemetery,  an 
old  veteran  of  1870,  once  took  me  through  the 
148 


THK    KoAI)    ■]'()    1\IKT7 


THE   DEBRIS   OF   A    FALLEN    GERMAN    AEROPLANE 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

place.  He  was  a  very  lean,  hooped-over  old  man 
with  a  big,  aquiline  nose,  blue-gray  eyes  framed 
in  red  lids,  and  a  huge,  yellowish-white  mustache. 
First  he  showed  me  the  hideous  picture  of  the 
civilian  cemetery,  in  which  giant  shells  had  torn 
open  the  tombs,  hurled  great  sarcophagi  a  dis- 
tance of  fifty  feet,  and  dug  craters  in  the  rows  of 
graves.  Though  the  civilian  authorities  had  done 
what  they  could  to  put  the  place  in  order,  there 
were  still  memories  of  the  disturbed  dead  to 
whom  the  war  had  denied  rest.  Coming  to  the 
military  cemetery,  the  guardian  whispered,  point- 
ing to  the  new  mounds  with  his  rustic  cane,  "I 
have  two  colonels,  three  commandants,  and  a 
captain.  Yes,  two  colonels"  (deux  colonels).  Fol- 
lowing his  staff,  my  eye  looked  at  the  graves  as  if 
it  expected  to  see  the  living  men  or  their  effigies. 
Somewhat  apart  lay  another  grave.  "Voila  un 
colonel  boche,"  said  the  sexton;  "and  a  lieutenant 
boche  —  and  fifty  soldats  boches." 

The  destroyed  quarter  of  Pont-a-Mousson  lay 
between  the  main  street  and  the  flank  of  the  Bois- 
le-Pretre,  The  quarter  was  almost  totally  de- 
serted, probably  not  more  than  ten  houses  being 
inhabited  out  of  several  thousand.  The  streets 
that  led  into  it  had  grass  growing  high  in  the  gut- 

149 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

ters,  and  a  velvety  moss  wearing  a  winter  lusti- 
ness grew  packed  between  the  paving-stones. 
Beyond  the  main  street,  la  rue  Fabvrier  went 
straight  down  this  loneliness,  and  halted  or 
turned  at  a  clump  of  wrecked  houses  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  away.  Over  this  clump,  slately-purple  and 
cold,  appeared  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  and  every  once 
in  a  while  a  puflfy  cloud  of  greenish-brown  or  gray- 
black  would  float  solemnly  over  the  crests  of  the 
trees.  This  stretch  of  la  rue  Fabvrier  was  one  of 
the  most  melancholy  pictures  it  was  possible  to 
see.  Hardly  a  house  had  been  spared  by  the  Ger- 
man shells;  there  were  pock-marks  and  pits  of 
shell  fragments  in  the  plaster,  window  glass  out- 
side, and  holes  in  walls  and  roofs.  I  wandered 
down  the  street,  passing  the  famous  miraculous 
statue  of  the  Virgin  of  Pont-a-Mousson.  The 
image,  only  a  foot  or  two  high  and  quite  devoid  of 
facial  expression,  managed  somehow  to  express 
emotion  in  the  outstretched  arms,  drooping  in  a 
gesture  at  once  of  invitation  and  acceptance.  A 
shell  had  maculated  the  wall  on  each  side  and 
above  the  statue,  but  the  little  niche  and  canopy 
were  quite  untouched.  The  heavy  sound  of  my 
soldier  boots  went  clump!  clump!  down  the  si- 
lence. 

ISO 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

At  the  end  of  the  road,  in  the  fields  on  the  slope, 
a  beautiful  eighteenth-century  house  stood  be- 
hind a  mossy  green  wall.  It  was  just  such  a 
French  house  as  is  the  analogue  of  our  brick  man- 
sions of  Georgian  days;  it  was  two  stories  high 
and  had  a  great  front  room  on  each  side  of  an 
entry  on  both  floors,  each  room  being  lighted 
with  two  well-proportioned  French  windows.  The 
outer  walls  were  a  golden  brown,  and  the  roof, 
which  curved  in  gently  from  the  four  sides  to  cen- 
tral ridge,  a  very  beautiful  rich  red.  The  house 
had  the  atmosphere  of  the  era  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution; one's  fancy  could  people  it  with  soberly 
dressed  provincial  grandees.  A  pare  of  larches 
and  hemlocks  lay  about  it,  concealing  in  their 
silent  obscurity  an  artificial  lake  heavily  coated 
with  a  pea-soup  scum. 

Beyond  the  house  lay  the  deserted  rose-garden, 
rank  and  grown  to  weeds.  On  some  of  the  bushes 
were  cankered,  frozen  buds.  In  the  center  of  the 
garden,  at  the  meeting-point  of  several  paths,  a 
mossy  fountain  was  flowing  into  a  greenish  basin 
shaped  like  a  seashell,  and  in  this  basin  a  poilu 
was  washing  his  clothes.  He  was  a  man  of  thirty- 
eight  or  nine,  big,  muscular,  out-of-doors  looking; 
whistling,  he  washed  his  gray  underclothes  with 

151 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  soap  the  army  furnishes,  wrung  them,  and 
tossed  them  over  the  rose-bushes  to  dry. 

"Does  anybody  live  in  this  house?" 

"Yes,  a  squad  of  travailleurs." 

A  regiment  of  travailleurs  is  attached  to  every 
sedeur  of  trenches.  These  soldiers,  depending,  I 
believe,  on  the  Engineer  Corps,  are  quartered  just 
behind  the  lines,  and  go  to  them  every  day  to 
put  them  in  order,  repair  the  roads,  and  do  all 
the  manual  labor.  Humble  folk  these,  peasants, 
ditch-diggers,  road-menders,  and  village  carpen- 
ters. Those  at  Pont-a-Mousson  were  nearly  all 
fathers  of  families,  and  it  was  one  of  the  sights  of 
the  war  most  charged  with  true  pathos  to  see 
these  gray-haired  men  marching  to  the  trenches 
with  their  shovels  on  their  shoulders. 

"Are  you  comfortable?" 

"Oh,  yes.  We  live  very  quietly.  I,  being  a 
stonemason  and  a  carpenter,  stay  behind  and 
keep  the  house  in  repair.  In  summer  we  have  our 
little  vegetable  gardens  down  behind  those  trees 
where  the  Boches  can't  see  us." 

"Can  I  see  the  house?" 

"Surely;  just  wait  till  I  have  finished  sousing 
these  clothes." 

The  room  on  the  ground  floor  to  the  left  of  the 

152 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

hallway  was  imposing  in  a  stately  Old- World  way. 
The  rooms  in  Wisteria  VUla  were  rooms  for  per- 
sonages from  Zola;  this  room  was  inhabited  by 
ghosts  from  the  pages  of  Balzac.  It  was  large,  high, 
and  square;  the  walls  were  hung  with  a  golden 
scroll  design  printed  on  ancient  yellow  silk;  the 
furniture  was  of  some  rich  brown  finish  with 
streaks  and  lusters  of  bronzy  yellow,  and  a  glass 
chandelier,  all  spangles  and  teardrops  of  crystal, 
hung  from  a  round  golden  panel  in  the  ceiling. 
Over  a  severe  Louis  XVI  mantel  was  a  large  oil 
portrait  of  Pius  IX,  and  on  the  opposite  wall  a 
portrait  head  of  a  very  beautiful  young  girl. 
Chestnut  hair,  parted  in  the  fashion  of  the  late 
sixties,  formed  a  silky  frame  round  an  oval  face, 
and  the  features  were  small  and  well  propor- 
tioned. The  most  remarkable  part  of  the  coun- 
tenance were  the  curiously  level  eyes.  The  calm, 
apart-from-the-world  character  of  the  expression 
in  the  eyes  was  in  interesting  contrast  to  the  good- 
natured  and  somewhat  childish  look  in  the  eyes  of 
the  old  Pope. 

"Who  lived  here?" 

"An  old  man  (un  vieux).  He  was  a  captain  of 
the  Papal  Zouaves  in  his  youth.  See  here,  read 
the  inscription  on  the  portrait  —  '  Presented  by 

153 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

His  Holiness  to  a  champion  (defenseur)  of  the 
Church.'" 

"Is  he  still  alive?" 

"He  died  three  months  ago  in  Paris.  I  should 
hate  to  die  before  I  see  how  the  war  is  going  to 
end.  I  imagine  he  would  have  been  willing  to  last 
a  bit  longer." 

"And  this  picture  on  the  right,  the  jeune 
fille?" 

"That  was  his  daughter,  an  only  child.  She  be- 
came a  nun,  and  died  when  she  was  still  young. 
The  old  man's  gardener  comes  round  from  time 
to  time  to  see  if  the  place  is  all  right.  It  is  a 
pity  he  is  not  here;  he  could  tell  you  all  about 
them." 

"You  are  very  fortunate  not  to  have  been 
blown  to  pieces.  Surely  you  are  very  near  the 
trenches." 

"Near  enough  —  yes,  indeed.  A  communica- 
tion trench  comes  right  into  the  cellar.  But  it  is 
quiet  in  this  part  of  The  Wood.  There  is  a  regi- 
ment of  old  Boches  in  the  trenches  opposite  our 
territorials,  fathers  of  families  (peres  de  families), 
just  as  they  are.  We  fire  rifles  at  each  other  from 
time  to  time  just  to  remember  it  is  war  (c'est  la 
guerre).  We  share  the  crest  together  here;  noth- 

154 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

ing  depends  on  it.  What  good  should  we  do  in 
killing  each  other?  Besides  it  would  be  a  waste 
of  shells." 

''How  do  you  know  that  the  Boches  opposite 
you  are  old? ' ' 

"We  see  them  from  time  to  time.  They  are 
great  hands  at  a  parley.  The  first  thing  they  tell 
you  is  the  number  of  children  they  have.  I  met  an 
old  Boche  not  long  ago  down  by  the  river.  He 
held  up  two  fingers  to  show  that  he  had  two  chil- 
dren, put  his  hand  out  just  above  his  knee  to  show 
the  height  of  his  first  child,  and  raised  it  just 
above  his  waist  to  show  the  height  of  the  second. 
So  I  held  up  five  fingers  to  show  him  I  had  five 
children,  when  the  Lord  knows  I  have  only  one. 
But  I  did  not  want  to  be  beaten  by  a  Boche." 

A  sound  of  voices  was  heard  beneath  us,  and 
the  clang  of  the  shovels  being  placed  against  the 
stone  walls  of  the  cellar. 

"Those  are  the  travailleurs.  The  sergeant  will 
be  coming  in  and  I  must  report  to  him.  Good-bye, 
American  friend,  and  come  again." 

A  melancholy  dusk  was  beginning  as  I  turned 
home  from  the  romantic  house,  and  the  deserted 
streets  were  filling  with  purplish  shadows.  The 
concussion  of  exploding  shells  had  blown  almost 

^S5 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

all  the  glass  out  of  the  windows  of  the  Church  of 
St.  Laurent,  and  the  few  brilliant  red  and  yellow 
fragments  that  still  clung  to  the  twisted  leaden 
frames  reminded  me  of  the  autumn  leaves  that 
sometimes  cling  to  winter-stricken  trees.  The 
interior  of  the  church  was  swept  and  garnished, 
and  about  twenty  candles  with  golden  flames, 
slowly  waving  in  the  drafts  from  the  ruined  win- 
dows, shone  beneath  a  statue  of  the  Virgin.  There 
was  not  another  soul  in  the  church.  A  terrible 
silence  fell  with  the  gathering  darkness.  In  a  little 
wicker  basket  at  the  foot  of  the  benignant  mother 
were  about  twenty  photographs  of  soldiers,  some 
in  little  brassy  frames  with  spots  of  verdigris  on 
them,  some  the  old-fashioned  "cabinet"  kind, 
some  on  simple  post-cards.  There  was  a  young, 
dark  Zouave  who  stood  with  his  hand  on  an  ugly 
little  table,  a  sergeant  of  the  Engineer  Corps  with 
a  vacant,  uninteresting  face,  and  two  young  in- 
fantry men,  brothers,  on  the  same  shabby  finger- 
marked post-card.  Pious  hands  had  left  them 
thus  in  the  care  of  the  unhappy  mother,  "Marie, 
consolatrice  des  malheureux." 

The  darkness  of  midnight  was  beginning  at 
Pont-a-Mousson,  for   the   town  was   always  as 
black  as  a  pit.  On  my  way  home  I  saw  a  furtive 
156 


The  Town  in  the  Trenches 

knife  edge  of  yellow  light  here  and  there  under  a 
door.  The  sentry  stood  by  his  shuttered  lantern. 
Suddenly  the  first  of  the  trench  lights  flowered  in 
the  sky  over  the  long  dark  ridge  of  the  Bois-le- 
Pr^tre. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MESSIEURS    LES   POILUS    DE    LA    GRANDE    GUERRE 

The  word  "poilu,"  now  applied  to  a  French  sol- 
dier, means  literally  "a  hairy  one,"  but  the  term 
is  understood  metaphorically.  Since  time  imme- 
morial the  possession  of  plenty  of  bodily  hair  has 
served  to  indicate  a  certain  sturdy,  male  bearish- 
ness,  and  thus  the  French,  long  before  the  war, 
called  any  good,  powerful  fellow  —  "  un  veritable 
poilu."  The  term  has  been  found  applied  to  sol- 
diers of  the  Napoleonic  wars.  The  French  soldier 
of  to-day,  coming  from  the  trenches  looking  like  a 
well-digger,  but  contented,  hearty,  and  strong,  is 
the  poilu  par  excellence. 

The  origin  of  the  term  "Boche,"  meaning  a 
German,  has  been  treated  in  a  thousand  articles, 
and  controversy  has  raged  over  it.  The  probable 
origin  of  the  term,  however,  lies  in  the  Parisian 
slang  word  "caboche,"  meaning  an  ugly  head. 
This  became  shortened  to  "Boche,"  and  was  ap- 
plied to  foreigners  of  Germanic  origin,  in  exactly 
the  way  that  the  American-born  laborer  applies 
the  contemptuous  term  "square-head"  to  his 

158 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

competitors  from  northern  Europe.  The  word 
"Boche"  cannot  be  translated  by  anything  ex- 
cept "Boche,"  any  more  than  our  word  "Wop," 
meaning  an  Italian,  can  be  turned  into  French. 
The  same  attitude,  half  banter,  half  race  con- 
tempt, lies  at  the  heart  of  both  terms. 

When  the  poilus  have  faced  the  Boches  for  two 
weeks  in  the  trenches,  they  march  down  late 
at  night  to  a  village  behind  the  lines,  far  enough 
away  from  the  batteries  to  be  out  of  danger  of 
everything  except  occasional  big  shells,  and  near 
enough  to  be  rushed  up  to  the  front  in  case  of 
an  attack.  There  they  are  quartered  in  houses, 
barns,  sheds,  and  cellars,  in  everything  that  can 
decently  house  and  shelter  a  man.  These  two 
weeks  of  repos  are  the  poilus^  elysium,  for  they 
mean  rest  from  strain,  safety,  and  comparative 
comfort.  The  English  have  behind  their  lines 
model  villages  with  macadam  roads,  concrete 
sidewalks,  a  water  system,  a  sewer  system,  and 
all  kinds  of  schemes  to  make  the  soldiers  happy; 
the  French  have  to  be  contented  with  an  ordinary 
Lorraine  village,  kept  in  good  order  by  the  Medi- 
cal Corps,  but  quite  destitute  of  anything  as  chic 
as  the  British  possess.  The  village  of  cantonnement 
is  pretty  sure  to  be  the  usual  brown-walled,  red- 

159 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

roofed  village  of  Lorraine  clumped  round  its  par- 
ish church  or  mouldering  castle.  In  such  a  French 
village  there  is  always  a  hall,  usually  over  the 
largest  wineshop,  called  the  "  Salle  de  Fetes,"  and 
this  hall  serves  for  the  concert  each  regiment  gives 
while  en  repos.  The  Government  provides  for, 
indeed  insists  upon,  a  weekly  bath,  and  the  bath- 
house, usually  some  converted  factory  or  large 
shed,  receives  its  daily  consignments  of  compa- 
nies, marching  up  to  the  douches  as  solemnly  as  if 
they  were  going  to  church.  Round  the  army  con- 
tinues the  often  busy  life  of  the  village,  for  to 
many  such  a  hamlet  the  presence  of  a  multitude 
of  soldiers  is  a  great  economic  boon.  Grocery- 
shops,  in  particular,  do  a  rushing  business,  for  any 
soldier  who  has  a  sou  is  glad  to  vary  the  govern- 
ment menu  with  such  delicacies  as  pdtss  de  foie 
gras,  little  sugar  biscuits,  and  the  well-beloved 
tablet  of  chocolate.  While  the  grocery-man 
{Vepicier)  is  fighting  somewhere  in  the  north  or  in 
the  Argonne,  madame  Pepicihe  stays  at  home  and 
serves  the  customers.  At  her  side  is  her  own  fa- 
ther, an  old  fellow  wearing  big  yellow  sabots,  and 
perhaps  the  grocer's  son  and  heir,  a  boy  about 
twelve  years  old.  Madame  is  dressed  entirely  in 
black,  not  because  she  is  in  mourning,  but  because 
1 60 


Les  Poilus  de  la  GraJide  Guerre 

it  is  the  rural  fashion;  she  wears  a  knitted  shoulder 
cape,  a  high  black  collar,  and  moves  in  a  brisk, 
businesslike  way;  the  two  men  wear  the  blue- 
check  overalls  persons  of  their  calling  affect,  in 
company  with  very  clean  white  collars  and  rather 
dirty,  frayed  bow  ties  of  unlovely  patterns.  Along 
the  counter  stand  the  poilus,  young,  old,  small, 
and  large,  all  wearing  various  fadings  of  the  hori- 
zon blue,  and  helmets  often  dented.  "  Some  pate 
de  foie  gras,  madame,  s'il  vous  plait."  "Oui, 
monsieur."  "How  much  is  this  cheese,  maman?" 
cries  the  boy  in  a  shrill  treble.  In  the  barrel- 
haunted  darkness  at  the  rear  of  the  shop,  the  old 
man  fumbles  round  for  some  tins  of  jelly.  The 
poilu  is  very  fond  of  sweets.  Sometimes  swish  bang  ! 
a  big  shell  comes  in  unexpectedly,  and  shop- 
keepers and  clients  hurry,  at  a  decent  tempo,  to 
the  cellar.  There,  in  the  earthy  obscurity,  one 
sits  down  on  empty  herring-boxes  and  vegetable 
cases  to  wait  calmly  for  the  exasperating  Boches  to 
finish  their'nonsense.  There  is  a  smell  of  kerosene 
oil  and  onions  in  the  air.  A  lantern,  always  on 
hand  for  just  such  an  emergency,  burns  in  a  corner. 
"Have  you  had  a  bad  time  in  the  trenches  this 
week,  Monsieur  Levrault?"  says  the  epiciere  to 
a  big,  stolid  soldier  who  is  a  regular  customer. 
i6i 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"No,  quite  passable,  Madame  Champaubert." 

"And  Monsieur  Petticollot,  how  is  he?" 

"Very  well,  thank  you,  madame.  His  captain 
was  killed  by  a  rifle  grenade  last  week." 

"Oh,  the  poor  man." 

Crash  goes  a  shell.  Everybody  wonders  where 
it  has  fallen.  In  a  few  seconds  the  eclats  rain 
down  into  the  street. 

"Dirty  animals,"  says  the  voice  of  the  old  man 
in  the  darkest  of  all  the  corners. 

Madame  Champaubert  begins  the  story  of  how 
a  cousin  of  hers  who  keeps  a  grocery-shop  at 
Mailly,  near  the  frontier,  was  cheated  by  a  Boche 
tinware  salesman.  The  cellar  listens  sympatheti- 
cally. The  boy  says  nothing,  but  keeps  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  soldiers.  In  about  twenty  minutes 
the  bombardment  ends,  and  the  bolder  ones  go 
out  to  ascertain  the  damage.  The  soldier's  pur- 
chases are  lying  on  the  counter.  These  he  stuffs 
into  his  musette,  the  cloth  wallet  beloved  of  the 
poilu,  and  departs.  The  colonel's  cook  comes  in; 
he  has  got  hold  of  a  good  ham  and  wants  to  deck 
it  out  with  herbs  and  capers.  Has  madame  any 
capers?  While  she  is  getting  them,  the  colonel's 
cook  retails  the  cream  of  all  the  regimental 
gossip. 

162 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

These  people  of  Lorraine  who  have  stayed  be- 
hind, "Lorrains,"  the  French  term  them,  are 
thoroughly  French,  though  there  is  some  German 
blood  in  their  veins.  This  Teuton  addition  is  of 
very  ancient  date,  being  due  to  the  constant  in- 
vasions which  have  swept  up  the  valley  of  the 
Moselle.  This  intermingling  of  the  races,  how- 
ever, continued  right  up  to  1870,  but  since  then 
the  union  of  French  and  German  stock  has  been 
rare.  It  was  most  frequent,  perhaps,  during  the 
years  between  1804  and  1850,  when  Napoleon's 
domination  of  the  principalities  and  states  along 
the  Rhine  led  to  a  French  social  and  commercial 
invasion  of  Rhenish  Germany,  an  invasion  which 
ended  only  with  the  growth  of  German  national- 
ism. The  middle  classes  in  particular  inter- 
married because  they  were  more  apt  to  be  en- 
gaged in  commerce.  But  since  1870,  two  barriers, 
one  geographic  —  annexed  Lorraine,  and  one 
intellectual  —  hatred,  have  kept  the  neighbors 
apart.  The  Lorrain  of  to-day,  no  matter  what  his 
ancestors  were,  is  a  thorough  Frenchman.  These 
Lorrains  are  between  medium  height  and  tall, 
strongly  built,  with  light,  tawny  hair,  good  color, 
and  a  brownish  complexion. 

The  poilus  who  come  to  the  village  en  repos  are 
.  163 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

from  every  part  of  France,  and  are  of  all  ages 
between  nineteen  and  forty-five.  I  remember 
seeing  a  boy  aged  only  fourteen  who  had  enhsted, 
and  was  a  regular  member  of  an  artillery  regi- 
ment. The  average  regiment  includes  men  of 
every  class  and  caste,  for  every  Frenchman  who 
can  shoulder  a  gun  is  in  the  war.  Thus  the  dusty 
little  soldier  who  is  standing  by  Poste  A,  may  be 
So-and-So  the  sculptor,  the  next  man  to  him  is 
simple  Jacques  who  has  a  little  farm  near 
Bourges,  and  the  man  beyond,  Emile,  the  notary's 
clerk.  It  is  this  amazing  fraternity  that  makes 
the  French  army  the  greatest  army  in  the  world. 
The  officers  of  a  regiment  of  the  active  forces 
(by  Varmee  active  you  are  to  understand  the  army 
actually  in  the  garrisons  and  under  arms  from 
year  to  year)  are  army  officers  by  profession;  the 
officers  of  the  reserve  regiments  are  either  retired 
officers  of  the  regular  army  or  men  who  have  vol- 
untarily followed  the  severe  courses  in  the  officers' 
training-school.  Thus  the  colonel  and  three  of  the 
commandants  of  a  certain  regiment  were  ex- 
officers  of  the  regular  army,  while  all  the  other 
officers,  captains,  lieutenants,  and  so  forth,  were 
citizens  who  followed  civilian  pursuits.  Captain  X 
was  a  famous  lawyer.  Captain  B  a  small  merchant 
164 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

in  a  little  known  provincial  town,  Captain  C 
a  photographer.  Any  Frenchman  who  has  the 
requisite  education  can  become  an  officer  if  he  is 
willing  to  devote  more  of  his  time,  than  is  by  law 
required,  to  military  service.  Thus  the  French 
army  is  the  soul  of  democracy,  and  the  officer 
understands,  and  is  understood  by,  his  men.  The 
spirit  of  the  French  army  is  remarkably  fraternal, 
and  this  fraternity  is  at  once  social  and  mystical. 
It  has  a  social  origin,  for  the  poilus  realize  that  the 
army  rests  on  class  justice  and  equal  opportunity; 
it  has  a  mystical  strength,  because  war  has  taught 
the  men  that  it  is  only  the  human  being  that 
counts,  and  that  comradeship  is  better  than  in- 
sistence on  the  rights  and  virtues  of  pomps  and 
prides.  After  having  been  face  to  face  with  death 
for  two  years,  a  man  learns  something  about  the 
true  values  of  human  life. 

The  men  who  tramp  into  the  village  at  one  and 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning  are  men  who  have  for 
two  weeks  been  under  a  strain  that  two  years  of 
experience  has  robbed  of  its  tensity.  But  strain  it 
is,  nevertheless,  as  the  occasional  carrying  of  a 
maniac  reveals.  They  know  very  well  why  they 
are  fighting;  even  the  most  ignorant  French  la- 
borer has  some  idea  as  to  what  the  affair  is  all 

165 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

about.  The  Boches  attacked  France  who  was 
peacefully  minding  her  own  business ;  it  was  the 
duty  of  all  Frenchmen  to  defend  France,  so  every- 
body went  to  the  war.  And  since  the  war  has  gone 
on  for  so  long,  it  must  be  seen  through  to  the  very 
end.  Not  a  single  poilu  wants  peace  or  is  ready 
for  peace.  And  the  French,  unlike  the  EngUsh, 
have  continually  under  their  eyes  the  spectacle 
of  their  devastated  land.  Yet  I  heard  no  fero- 
cious talk  about  the  Germans,  no  tales  of  French 
cruelty  toward  German  prisoners.  Nevertheless,  a 
German  prisoner  who  had  been  taken  in  the  Bois- 
le-Pretre  confessed  to  me  a  horror  of  the  French 
breaking  through  into  Germany.  Looking  round 
to  see  if  any  one  was  listening,  he  said  in  English, 
for  he  was  an  educated  man  —  "Just  remem- 
ber the  French  Revolution.  Just  remember  the 
French  Revolution.  God!  what  cruelties.  You 
remember  Carrier  at  Nantes,  don't  you,  my  dear 
sir?  All  the  things  we  are  said  to  have  done 
in  Belgium — "  But  here  the  troop  of  prisoners 
was  hurried  to  one  side,  and  I  never  saw  the  man 
again.  An  army  will  always  have  all  kinds  of 
people  in  it,  the  good,  the  bad,  the  degenerate, 
the  depraved,  the  brutal ;  and  these  t^pes  will  act 
according  to  their  natures.  But  I  can't  imagine 
i66 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Gra?ide  Giiene 

several  regiments  of  French  poilus  doing  in  little 
German  towns  what  the  Germans  did  at  Nomeny. 
The  backbone  of  the  French  army,  as  he  is  the 
backbone  of  France,  is  the  French  peasant.  In 
spite  of  De  Maupassant's  ugly  tales  of  the  Nor- 
man country  people,  and  Zola's  studies  of  the 
sordid,  almost  bestial,  life  of  certain  unhappy, 
peasant  famiUes,  the  French  peasant  (cuUivateur) 
is  a  very  fine  fellow.  He  has  three  very  good 
qualities,  endurance,  patience,  and  willingness  to 
work.  Apart  from  these  characteristics,  he  is  an 
excellent  fellow  by  himself;  not  jovial,  to  be  sure, 
but  solid,  self-respecting,  and  glad  to  make  friends 
when  there  is  a  chance  that  the  friendship  will  be 
a  real  one.  He  does  not  care  very  much  for  the 
working  men  of  the  towns,  the  ouvriers,  with  their 
fantastic  theories  of  universal  brotherhood  and 
peace,  and  he  hates  the  depute  whom  the  working 
man  elects  as  he  hates  a  vine  fungus.  A  needless 
timidity,  some  fear  of  showing  himself  off  as  a 
simpleton,  has  kept  him  from  having  his  just  in- 
fluence in  French  politics;  but  the  war  is  freeing 
him  from  these  shackles,  and  when  peace  comes, 
he  will  make  himself  known:  that  is,  if  there  are 
any  peasants  left  to  vote.  Another  thing  about 
the  peasantry  is  that  trench  warfare  does  not 
167 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

weary  them,  the  constant  contact  with  the  earth 
having  nothing  unusual  in  it.  A  friend  of  mine, 
the  younger  son  of  a  great  landed  family  of  the 
province  of  Anjou,  was  captain  of  a  company 
almost  exclusively  composed  of  peasants  of  his 
native  region ;  he  loved  them  as  if  they  were  his 
children,  and  they  would  follow  him  anywhere. 
The  little  company,  almost  to  a  man,  was  wiped 
out  in  the  battles  round  Verdun.  In  a  letter  I 
received  from  this  of&cer,  a  few  days  before  his 
death,  he  related  this  anecdote.  His  company  was 
waiting,  in  a  new  trench  in  a  new  region,  for  the 
Germans  to  attack.  Suddenly  the  tension  was 
relieved  by  a  fierce  little  discussion  carried  on 
entirely  in  whispers.  His  soldiers  appeared  to  be 
studying  the  earth  of  the  trench.  "What's  the 
trouble  about?"  he  asked.  Came  the  answer, 
"They  are  quarrehng  as  to  whether  the  earth 
of  this  trench  would  best  support  cabbages  or 
turnips." 

It  is  rare  to  find  a  French  workman  (ouvrier)  in 
the  trenches.  They  have  all  been  taken  out  and 
sent  home  to  make  shells. 

The  little  group  to  which  I  was  most  attached, 
and  for  whose  hospitaUty  and  friendly  greeting 
I  shall  always  be  a  debtor,  consisted  of  Belin,  a 
i68 


Les  Foil  us  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

railroad  clerk;  Bonnefon,  a  student  at  the  Ecole 
des  Beaux- Arts;  Magne,  a  village  schoolmaster  in 
the  Dauphine;  and  Gretry,  proprietor  of  a 
butcher's  shop  in  the  Latin  Quarter  of  Paris. 
Belin  and  Magne  had  violins  which  they  left  in  the 
care  of  a  cafe-keeper  in  the  village,  and  used  to 
play  on  them  just  before  dinner.  The  dinner  was 
served  in  the  house  of  the  village  woman  who  pre- 
pared the  food  of  these  four,  for  soiis-offlciers  are 
entitled  to  eat  by  themselves  if  they  can  find  any 
one  kind  enough  to  look  after  the  cooking.  If  they 
can't,  then  they  have  to  rely  entirely  on  the  sub- 
stantial but  hardly  delicious  cuisine  of  their  regi- 
mental cuistot.  However,  at  this  village,  Madame 
Brun,  the  widow  of  the  local  carpenter,  had  of- 
fered to  take  the  popolle,  as  the  French  term  an 
oflScer's  mess.  We  ate  in  a  room  half  parlor,  half 
bedchamber,  decorated  exclusively  with  holy 
pictures.  This  was  a  good  specimen  menu  — 
bread,  vermicelli  soup,  apple  fritters,  potato 
salad,  boiled  beef,  red  wine,  and  coffee.  Of  this 
dinner,  the  Government  furnished  the  potatoes, 
the  bread,  the  meat,  the  coffee,  the  wine,  and  the 
condiments;  private  purses  paid  for  the  fritters, 
the  vermicelli,  and  the  bits  of  onion  in  the  salad. 
Standing  round  their  barns  the  private  soldiers 
169 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

were  having  a  tasty  stew  of  meat  and  potatoes 
cooked  by  the  field  kitchen,  bread,  and  a  cupful  of 
boiled  lentils  (known  in  the  army  as  "edible  bed- 
bugs"), all  washed  down  with  the  army  pinard, 
or  red  wine. 

This  village  in  which  the  troops  were  lodged 
revealed  in  an  interesting  way  the  course  of 
French  history.  Across  the  river  on  a  rise  was  a 
cross  commemorating  the  victory  of  the  Emperor 
Jovin  over  the  invading  Germans  in  371,  and 
sunken  in  the  bed  of  the  Moselle  were  still  seen 
lengths  of  Roman  dikes.  The  heart  of  the  village, 
however,  was  the  corpse  of  a  fourteenth-century 
castle  which  Richelieu  had  dismantled  in  1630. 
Its  destiny  had  been  a  curious  one.  Dismantled 
by  Richelieu,  sacked  in  the  French  Revolution,  it 
had  finally  become  a  kind  of  gigantic  medieval 
apartment  house  for  the  peasants  of  the  region. 
The  salle  d'honneur  was  cut  up  into  little  rooms, 
the  room  of  the  seigneur  became  a  haymow,  and 
the  cellars  of  the  towers  were  used  to  store  pota- 
toes in.  About  twenty  little  chimneys  rose  over 
the  old,  dilapidated  battlements.  A  haymow  in 
this  castle  was  the  most  picturesque  thing  I  ever 
saw  in  a  cantonment.  It  was  the  wreck  of  a  lofty 
and  noble  fifteenth-century  room,  the  ceiling,  still 
170 


Les  Poiliis  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

a  rich  red  brown,  was  supported  on  beautiful 
square  beams,  and  a  cross-barred  window  of  the 
Renaissance,  of  which  only  the  stonework  re- 
mained, commanded  a  fine  view  over  the  river. 
The  walls  of  the  room  were  of  stone,  whitewashed 
years  before,  and  the  floor  was  an  ordinary  barn 
floor  made  of  common  planks  and  covered  with 
a  foot  of  new,  clean  hay.  In  the  center  of  the 
southern  wall  was  a  Gothic  fireplace,  still  black 
and  ashy  within.  On  the  corners  of  this  mantel 
hung  clusters  of  canteens,  guns  were  stacked  by  it, 
and  a  blue  overcoat  was  rolled  up  at  its  base.  An 
old  man,  the  proprietor  of  the  loft,  followed  us 
up,  made  signs  that  he  was  completely  deaf,  and 
traced  in  the  dust  on  the  floor  the  date,  1470. 

The  concerts  were  held  in  the  "  Salle  de  Fetes," 
a  hall  in  which,  during  peace  time,  the  village 
celebrates  its  little  festivals.  It  was  an  ugly,  bare 
shed  with  a  sloping  roof  resting  on  iron  girders 
painted  clay  white,  but  the  poilus  had  beautified 
it  with  a  home-made  stage  and  rustic  greenery. 
The  proscenium  arch,  painted  by  Bonnefon,  was 
pearl-gray  in  color  and  decorated  with  panels  of 
gilt  stripes;  and  a  shield  showing  the  lictor's  rods, 
a  red  liberty  cap  and  the  letters  "  R.  F. "  served  as 
a  headpiece.  The  scenery,  also  the  work  of  Bonne- 
171 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

fon,  represented  a  Versailles  kind  of  garden  full  of 
statues  and  very  watery  fountains.  There  was  no 
curtain.  Just  below  the  stage  a  semicircle  of  chairs 
had  been  arranged  for  the  officers  of  the  regiment, 
and  behind  these  were  wooden  benches  and  a 
large  space  for  standing  room.  By  the  time  the 
concert  was  supposed  to  begin,  every  bench  was 
filled,  and  standing  room  was  at  a  premium.  Sud- 
denly there  were  cries  of  "Le  Colonel,"  and  every- 
body stood  up  as  the  fine-looking  old  colonel  and 
his  staff  took  their  places.  The  orchestra,  com- 
posed of  a  pianist,  a  few  violinists,  and  a  flute- 
player,  began  to  play  the  "Marseillaise."  When 
the  music  was  over,  and  everybody  decently 
quiet,  the  concert  began. 

"Le  Camarade  Tollot,  of  the  Theatre  des 
Varietes  de  Paris  will  recite  'Le  Dernier  Dra- 
peau,'"  shouted  the  announcer.  Le  Camarade 
Tollot  walked  on  the  stage  and  bowed,  a  big,  im- 
portant young  man  with  a  lion's  mane  of  dark 
hair.  Then,  striking  an  attitude,  he  recited  in  the 
best  French,  ranting  style,  a  rhymed  tale  of  a 
battle  in  which  many  regiments  charged  together, 
flags  flying.  One  by  one  the  flags  fell  to  the 
ground  as  the  bearers  were  cut  down  by  the 
withering  fire  of  the  enemy;  all  save  one  who 
172 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

struggled  on.  It  was  a  fine,  old-fashioned,  dra- 
matic "  will-he-get- there-yes-he-will-he-f alls  "  sort 
of  thing.  "II  tombe,"  said  le  Camarade  Tollot,  in 
what  used  to  be  called  the  "oratorical  orotund  " 
—  "il  tombe."  There  was  a  full  pause.  He  was 
wounded.  He  rose  staggering  to  his  feet.  All  the 
other  flags  were  down.  He  advanced  —  the  last 
flag  {le  dernier  drapeau)  reached  the  enemy  —  and 
died  just  as  his  comrades,  heartened  by  his  cour- 
age, had  rallied  and  were  charging  to  victory.  A 
tremendous  storm  of  applause  greeted  the  speaker, 
who  favored  us  with  the  recital  of  a  short,  senti- 
mental poem  as  an  encore. 

The  next  number  was  thus  announced:  "Le 
Camarade  Millet  will  sound,  first,  all  the  French 
bugle-calls  and  then  the  Boche  ones."  Le  Camar- 
ade Millet,  a  big  man  with  a  fine  horseshoe  beard, 
stood  at  the  edge  of  the  stage,  said,  "la  Charge 
franjais"  and  blew  it  on  the  bugle;  then  "la 
Charge  boche,"  and  blew  that.  "La  Retraite 
franfais  —  La  Retraite  boche,"  etc.  Another 
salvo  of  applause  was  given  to  le  Camarade 
Millet. 

"Le  Camarade  Roland." 

Le  Camarade  Roland  was  about  twenty-one  or 
two  years  old,  but  his  eyes  were  old  and  wise,  and 

173 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

he  had  evidently  seen  life.  He  was  dark-haired 
and  a  Uttle  below  medium  height.  The  red  scar 
of  a  wound  appeared  just  below  his  left  ear.  After 
marking  time  with  his  feet,  he  began  a  kind  of 
patter  song  about  having  a  telephone,  every 
verse  of  which  ended,  "Oh,  la  la,  j'ai  le  tele- 
phone chez  moi"  (I've  a  telephone  in  my  house). 
"I  know  who  is  unfaithful  now — who  have  horns 
upon  their  brow,"  the  singer  told  of  surprising 
secrets  and  unsuspected  affaires  de  coeur.  The 
silly,  music-hall  song  may  seem  banal  now,  but  it 
amused  us  hugely  then. 
"  Le  Camarade  Duclos." 

"  Oh,  if  you  could  have  seen  your  son, 
My  mother,  my  mother, 
Oh,  if  you  could  have  seen  your  son, 
With  the  regiment  "  — 

sang  Camarade  Duclos,  another  old-eyed  young- 
ster. There  was  amiable  adventure  with  an 
amiable  "blonde"  (oh,  if  you  could  have  seen 
your  son);  another  w4th  a  "jolie  brune  "  (oh,  ma 
mere,  ma  mere) ;  and  still  another  leqon  d' amour. 
The  refrain  had  a  catchy  lilt  to  it,  and  the  poilus 
began  humming  it. 

"  Le  Camarade  Salvatore." 

The   newcomer   was   a   big,   obese   Corsican 

174 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Gra?ide  Guerre 

mountaineer,  with  a  pleasant,  round  face  and 
brown  eyes.  He  advanced  quietly  to  the  side  of 
the  stage  holding  a  ten-sou  tin  flute  in  his  hand, 
and  when  he  began  to  play,  for  an  instant  I  forgot 
all  about  the  Bois-le-Pretre,  the  trenches,  and 
everything  else.  The  man  was  a  born  musician. 
I  never  heard  anything  more  tender  and  sweet 
than  the  Httle  melody  he  played.  The  poilus  hs- 
tened  in  profound  silence,  and  when  he  had  fin- 
ished, a  kind  of  sigh  exhaled  from  the  hearts  of 
the  audience. 

There  followed  another  singer,  a  violinist,  and 
a  clown  whose  song  of  a  soldier  on  furlough  fin- 
ished with  these  appreciated  couplets :  — 

"The  Government  says  it  is  the  thing 
To  have  a  baby  every  spring; 

So  when  your  son 

Is  twenty-one, 
He  '11  come  to  the  trenches  and  take  papa's  place. 
So  do  your  duty  by  the  race." 

In  the  uproar  of  cheers  of  "That's  right,"  and  so 
on,  the  concert  ended. 

The  day  after  the  concert  was  Sunday,  and  at 
about  ten  o'clock  that  morning  a  young  soldier 
with  a  fluffy,  yellow  chin  beard  came  down  the 
muddy  street  shouting,  "le  Mouchoir,  le  Mou- 
choir."  About  two  or  three  hundred  paper  sheets 

175 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

were  clutched  tightly  in  his  left  hand,  and  he  was 
selling  them  for  a  sou  apiece.  Little  groups  of 
poilus  gathered  round  the  soldier  newsboy;  I  saw 
some  of  them  laughing  as  they  went  away.  The 
paper  was  the  trench  paper  of  the  Bois-le-Pretre, 
named  the  "Mouchoir"  (the  handkerchief)  from 
a  famous  position  thus  called  in  the  Bois.  The 
jokes  in  it  were  like  the  jokes  in  a  local  minstrel 
show,  puns  on  local  names,  jests  about  the  Boches, 
and  good-humored  satire.  The  spirit  of  the 
"Mouchoir"  was  whole-heartedly  amateur.  Thus 
the  issue  which  followed  a  heavy  snowfall  con- 
tained this  genuine  wish:  — 

"Oh,  snow, 
Please  go, 
Leave  the  trench 
Of  the  French; 
Cross  the  band 
Of  No  Man's  Land 
To  where  the  Boche  lies. 
Freeze  him, 
Squeeze  him. 
Soak  him, 
Choke  him, 
Cover  him, 
Smother  him, 
Till  the  beggar  dies." 

This  is  far  from  an  exact  translation,  but  the 

idea  and  the  spirit  have  been  faithfully  preserved. 

176 


t^ 


,  •-!«  ■ii*>.  '.  -  en  *3  iU\  •  ft-'A^  («^  w»N^t 

\*v   vwfl-  WC^*".    'i- '  *-.«'«*J     (9.  c^*^«/*kJ   VA.' 


THE  TRENCH 


f^W(?G«te| 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

The  "Mouchoir"  was  always  a  bit  more  squeam- 
ish than  the  average,  rollicking  trench  journal,  for 
it  was  issued  by  a  group  of  medical  service  men 
who  were  almost  all  priests.  Indeed,  there  were 
some  issues  that  combined  satire,  puns,  and  piety 
in  a  terrifying  manner.  Its  editors  printed  it  in 
the  cellar  of  the  church,  using  a  simple  sheet  of 
gelatine  for  their  press. 

I  wandered  in  to  see  the  church.  The  usual 
number  of  civilians  were  to  be  seen,  and  a  gener- 
ous sprinkling  of  soldiers.  Through  the  open  door 
of  the  edifice  the  sounds  of  a  mine-throwing  com- 
petition at  the  Bois  occasionally  drifted.  The 
abbe,  a  big,  dark  man  of  thirty-four  or  five,  with 
a  deep,  resonant  voice  and  positive  gestures,  had 
come  to  the  sermon. 

"Brethren,"  said  he,  "in  place  of  a  sermon  this 
morning,  I  shall  read  the  annual  exposition  of  our 
Christian  faith"  (exposition  de  la  foi  chretienne). 
He  began  reading  from  a  little  book  a  historical 
account  of  the  creation  and  the  temptation,  and 
so  concise  was  the  language  and  so  certain  his 
voice  that  I  had  the  sensation  of  listening  to  a 
series  of  events  that  had  actually  taken  place.  He 
might  have  been  reading  the  communique.  "Le 
premier  homme  was  called  Adam,  and  la  premiere 
177 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

femme,  Eve.  Certain  angels  began  a  revolt 
against  God;  they  are  called  the  bad  angels  or 
the  demons."  (Certains  anges  se  sont  mis  en  re- 
volte  contre  Dieu;  il  sont  appelles  les  mauvais 
anges  ou  les  demons.)  "And  from  this  original  sin 
arrives  all  the  troubles,  Death  to  which  the  human 
race  is  subjected."  Such  was  the  discourse  I  heard 
in  the  church  by  the  trenches  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  the  distant  chanting  of  The  Wood. 

Going  by  again  late  in  the  afternoon,  I  saw  the 
end  of  an  officer's  funeral.  The  body,  in  a  wooden 
box  covered  with  the  tricolor,  was  being  carried 
out  between  two  files  of  muddy  soldiers,  who  stood 
at  attention,  bayonets  fixed.  A  peasant's  cart, 
a  tumbril,  was  waiting  to  take  the  body  to  the 
cemetery;  the  driver  was  having  a  hard  time  con- 
trolling a  fooUsh  and  restive  horse.  The  colonel, 
a  fine-looking  man  in  the  sixties,  came  last  from 
the  church,  and  stood  on  the  steps  surrounded 
by  his  officers.    The  dusk  was  falling. 

"Officiers,  sous-officiers,  soldats. 

"Lieutenant  de  Blanchet,  whose  death  we  de- 
plore, was  a  gallant  officer,  a  true  comrade,  and 
a  loyal  Frenchman.  In  order  that  France  might 
live,  he  was  willing  to  close  his  eyes  on  her  fur- 
ever." 

178 


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THE  TRENCH] 


1,8  COIN  ni>  PotTtSi^    ,t.w.iji.i.^8,t*_l.. 

_J5t[„.    ... 


Les  Poilus  de  la  Grande  Guerre 

The  officer  advanced  to  the  tumbril  and  hold- 
ing his  hand  high  said :  — 

"  Farewell  —  de  Blanchet,  we  say  unto  thee  the 
eternal  adieu." 

The  door  of  the  church  was  wide  open.  The 
sacristan  put  out  the  candles,  and  the  smoke  from 
them  rose  like  incense  into  the  air.  The  tumbril 
rattled  away  in  the  dusk.  My  mind  returned 
again  to  the  phrases  of  the  sermon, — original 
sin,  death,  life,  of  a  sudden,  seemed  strangely 
grotesque. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  any  one  more  cour- 
teous and  kind  than  the  French  officer.  A  good 
deal  of  the  success  of  the  American  Ambulance 
Field  Sections  in  France  is  due  to  the  hospitality 
and  bon  acceuil  of  the  French,  and  to  the  work 
of  the  French  officers  attached  to  the  Sections.  In 
Lieutenant  Kuhlman,  who  commanded  at  Pont-a- 
Mousson,  every  American  had  a  good  friend  and 
tactful,  hard-working  officer;  in  Lieutenant  Maas, 
who  commanded  at  Verdun,  the  qualities  of 
administrative  ability  and  perfect  courtesy  were 
most  happily  joined. 

The  principal  characteristic  of  the  French  sol- 
dier is  his  reasonableness. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PREPARING  THE  DEFENSE  OF  VERDUN 

Every  three  months,  if  the  military  situation  will 
allow  of  it  and  every  other  man  in  his  group  has 
likewise  been  away,  the  French  soldier  gets  a  six 
days'  furlough.  The  slips  of  paper  which  are  then 
given  out  are  called  feuilles  de  permission,  and 
the  lucky  soldier  is  called  a  permissionnaire. 
When  the  combats  that  gave  the  Bois-le-Pretre 
its  sinister  nickname  began  to  peter  out,  the 
poilus  who  had  done  the  fighting  were  accorded 
these  little  vacations,  and  almost  every  afternoon 
the  straggling  groups  of  joyous  permissionnaires 
were  seen  on  the  road  between  the  trenches  and 
the  station.  The  expression  on  the  faces  was  never 
that  of  having  been  rescued  from  a  living  hell;  it 
expressed  joy  and  prospect  of  a  good  time  rather 
than  deliverance. 

When  I  got  my  permission,  a  comrade  took  me 
to  the  station  at  a  certain  rail-head  where  a  special 
train  started  for  Paris,  and  by  paying  extra  I  was 
allowed  to  travel  second  class.  I  shall  not  dwell 
on  the  journey  because  I  did  not  meet  a  single 
I  So 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

human  being  worth  recording  during  the  trip. 
At  eight  at  night  I  arrived  in  Paris.  So  varied 
had  been  my  experiences  at  the  front  that  had  I 
stepped  out  into  a  dark  and  deserted  city  I  should 
not  have  been  surprised.  The  poilu,  when  he  sees 
the  city  Hghts  again,  ahnost  feels  like  saying, 
"Why,  it  is  still  here!"  Many  of  them  look 
frankly  at  the  women,  not  in  the  spirit  of  gallant 
adventure,  but  out  of  pure  curiosity.  In  spite  of 
the  French  reputation  for  roguish  licentiousness, 
the  sex  question  never  seems  to  intrude  very  much 
along  the  battle-line,  perhaps  because  there  is  so 
little  to  suggest  it.  Certainly  conversation  at  the 
front  ignores  sex  altogether,  and  speech  there  is 
remarkably  decent  and  clean.  Of  course,  when 
music-hall  songs  are  sung  at  the  concerts,  the  other 
sex  is  sometimes  more  than  casually  mentioned. 
It  is  the  comic  papers  which  are  responsible  for 
the  myth  that  the  period  of  furlough  is  spent  in 
a  Roman  orgy;  this  is,  of  course,  true  of  some  few, 
but  for  the  great  majority  the  reverse  rules,  and 
une  permission  is  spent  in  a  typically  French  way, 
paymg  formal  calls  to  the  oldest  friends  of  the 
family,  being  with  the  family  as  much  as  possible, 
and  attending  to  such  homely  affairs  as  the  pur- 
chase of  socks  and  underclothes.  In  the  evening 
i8i 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

brave  Jacques  or  Georges  or  Francois  is  visited 
by  all  his  old  cronies,  who  gather  round  the  hero 
and  ask  him  questions,  and  he  is  solemnly  kissed 
by  all  his  relatives.  One  evening  is  sure  to  be  con- 
secrated to  a  grand  family  reunion  at  a  restaurant. 

I  determined  to  observe,  during  my  permission, 
the  new  France  which  has  come  into  being  since 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and  the  attitude  of  the 
French  toward  their  allies.  I  knew  the  old  France 
pretty  well.  Putting  any  ridiculous  ideas  of 
French  decadence  aside,  the  France  of  the  last  ten 
years  did  not  have  the  international  standing  of 
an  older  France.  The  Delcasse  incident  had  re- 
vealed a  France  evidently  untaught  by  the  lesson 
of  1870,  and  if  the  Moroccan  question  ended  in  a 
French  victory,  it  was  frankly  won  by  getting  be- 
hind the  petticoats  of  England.  The  nation  was 
unprepared  for  war,  torn  by  political  strife,  and  in 
a  position  to  be  ruthlessly  trampled  on  by  the 
Germans.  The  France  of  1900-13  is  not  a  very 
pleasant  France  to  remember. 

For  one  thing,  the  bitter  strife  aroused  by  the 
breaking  of  the  Concordat  and  the  seizure  of  the 
property  of  the  Church  was  slowly  crystallizing 
into  an  icy  hatred,  the  worst  in  the  world,  the 
hatred  of  a  man  who  has  been  robbed.  The 
182 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

Church  Separation  Law  may  have  been  right  in 
theory,  and  with  the  hberal  tendencies  of  the  re- 
formers one  may  have  every  sympathy,  but  the 
fact  remains  that  the  sale  and  dispersion  of  the 
ecclesiastical  property  passed  in  a  storm  of  cor- 
ruption and  graft.  Properties  worth  many  thou- 
sands of  dollars  were  juggled  among  political 
henchmen,  sold  for  a  song,  and  sold  again  at  a 
great  profit.  Even  as  the  Southerners  complain 
of  the  Reconstruction  rather  than  of  the  Civil 
War,  so  do  the  French  Catholics  complain,  not 
of  the  law,  but  of  its  aftermath.  The  Socialist- 
Labor  Party  exultant,  the  Catholic  Party  wronged 
and  revengeful,  and  all  the  other  thousand  par- 
ties of  the  French  Government  at  one  another's 
throats,  there  seemed  little  hope  for  the  real 
France.  The  tragedy  of  the  thing  lay  in  the  fact 
that  this  disunion  and  strife  was  caused  by  the 
excess  of  a  good  quality;  in  other  words,  that 
the  remarkable  ability  of  every  Frenchman  to 
think  for  himself  was  destroying  the  national 
unity. 

Meanwhile,  what  was  the  state  of  the  army  and 
navy? 

The  Minister  of  War  of  the  radicals  who  had 
triumphed  was  General  Andre,  a  narrow,  bigoted 

183 


A  Volunteer  Poilii 

doctrinaire.  The  force  behind  the  evU  work  of 
this  man  can  be  hardly  realized  by  those  who  are 
unfamiliar  with  the  passion  with  which  the  French 
invest  the  idea.  There  are  times  when  the  French, 
the  most  brilliant  people  in  the  world  as  a  nation, 
seem  to  lack  mental  brakes  —  when  the  idea  so 
obsesses  them,  that  they  become  fanatics,  —  not 
the  emotional,  English  ty^t  of  fanatic,  but  a  cold, 
hard-headed,  intellectual  Latin  type.  The  radi- 
cal Frenchman  says,  "Are  the  Gospels  true? " 
"Presumably  no,  according  to  modem  science 
and  historical  research."  "  Then  away  with  every- 
thing founded  on  the  Gospels,"  he  replies;  and 
begins  a  cold-blooded,  highly  intellectual  cam- 
paign of  destruction.  Thus  it  is  that  the  average 
French  church  or  public  building  of  any  antiquity, 
whether  it  be  in  Paris  or  in  an  obscure  vUlage,  has 
been  so  often  mutilated  that  it  is  only  a  shadow 
of  itself.  France  is  strewn  with  wrecks  of  build- 
ings embodying  disputed  ideas.  And  worst  of  all, 
these  buildings  were  rarely  sacked  by  a  mob ;  the 
revolutionary  commune,  in  many  cases,  paying 
laborers  to  smash  windows  and  destroy  sculpture 
at  so  much  a  day. 

Andre  believed  it  his  mission  to  extirpate  all 
conservatism,  whether  Catholic  or  not,  from  the 
184 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

army.  In  a  few  short  months,  by  a  campaign  of 
delation  and  espionage,  he  had  completely  dis- 
organized the  army,  the  only  really  national  in- 
stitution left  in  France.  Ofhcers  of  standing,  sus- 
pected of  any  reactionary  political  tendency,  were 
discharged  by  the  thousand;  and  officers  against 
whom  no  charge  could  be  brought  were  refused 
ammunition,  even  though  they  were  stationed  at 
a  ticklish  point  on  the  frontier.  At  the  same  time 
a  like  disorganization  was  taking  place  in  the 
navy,  the  evil  genius  of  the  Marine  being  the 
Minister  Camille  Pelletan. 

Those  who  saw,  in  1912,  the  ceremonies  at- 
tendant on  the  deposition  of  the  bones  of  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau  in  the  Pantheon  were  sick  at 
heart.  Never  had  the  Government  of  France  sunk 
so  low.  The  Royalists  shouted,  the  extreme  radi- 
cals hooted,  and  when  the  carriage  of  Fallieres 
passed,  it  was  seen  that  humorists  had  somehow 
succeeded  in  writing  jocose  inscriptions  on  the 
presidential  carriage.  The  head  of  the  French 
nation,  a  short,  pudgy  man,  the  incarnation  of 
pontif ying  mediocrity,  went  by  with  an  expression 
on  his  face  like  that  of  a  terrified,  elderly,  pink 
rabbit.  The  bescrawled  carriage  and  its  humili- 
ated occupant  passed  by  to  an  accompaniment  of 

i8S 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

jeering.  Everybody  —  parties  and  populace  — 
was  jeering.  The  scene  was  disgusting. 

The  election  of  Poincare,  a  man  of  genuine  dis- 
tinction, was  a  sign  of  better  times.  Millerand 
became  Minister  of  War,  and  began  the  reorgani- 
zation of  the  army,  thus  making  possible  the  vic- 
tory of  the  Marne.  But  a  petty  intrigue  led  by 
a  group  of  radicals  caused  the  resignation  of  this 
minister  at  a  time  when  the  First  Balkan  War 
threatened  to  engulf  Europe.  The  maneuver 
was  inexcusable.  Messimy,  an  attache  of  the 
group  who  had  led  the  attack,  took  Millerand's 
place.  When  the  war  broke  out,  Messimy  was 
invited  to  make  himself  scarce,  and  Millerand 
returned  to  his  post.  Thanks  ,to  him,  the  army 
was  as  ready  as  an  army  in  a  democratic  country 
can  be. 

The  France  of  1915-16  is  a  new  France.  The 
nation  has  learned  that  if  it  is  to  live  it  must  cease 
tearing  itself  to  pieces,  and  all  parties  are  united 
in  a  "  Holy  Union  "  {V  Union  Sacree).  Truce  in  the 
face  of  a  common  danger  or  a  real  union?  Will  it 
last?  Alarmists  whisper  that  when  the  war  is 
over,  the  army  will  settle  its  score  with  the  poli- 
ticians. Others  predict  a  great  victory  for  the 
radicals,  because  the  industrial  classes  are  safe  at 
186 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

home  making  shells  while  the  conservative  peas- 
ants are  being  killed  off  in  the  trenches.  Every- 
body in  France  is  saying,  "What  will  happen 
when  the  army  comes  home?"  There  is  to-day 
only  one  man  in  France  completely  trusted  by  all 
classes  —  General  Joffre,  and  if  by  any  chance 
there  should  be  political  troubles  after  the  war, 
the  army  and  the  nation  will  look  to  him. 

The  French  fully  realize  what  the  EngHsh  alli- 
ance has  meant  to  them,  and  are  grateful  for  Eng- 
ish  aid.  As  the  titanic  character  of  England's 
mighty  effort  becomes  clearer,  the  sympathy  with 
England  will  increase.  Of  course  one  cannot  ex- 
pect the  French  to  understand  the  state  of  mind 
which  insists  upon  a  volunteer  system  in  the  face 
of  the  deadhest  and  most  terrible  foe.  The  atti- 
tude of  the  English  to  sport  has  rather  perplexed 
them,  and  they  did  not  like  the  action  of  some 
English  officers  in  bringing  a  pack  of  hounds  to 
the  Flanders  front.  It  was  thought  that  officers 
should  be  soldiers  first  and  sportsmen  afterward, 
and  the  knowledge  that  dilettante  English  offi- 
cers were  riding  to  hounds  while  the  English  na- 
tion was  resisting  conscription  and  Jean,  Jacques, 
and  Pierre  were  doing  the  fighting  and  dying  in  the 
trenches,  provoked  a  secret  and  bitter  disdain. 
187 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

But  since  the  British  have  got  into  the  war  as  a 
nation,  this  secret  disdain  has  been  forgotten,  and 
the  poilu  has  taken  "le  Tommie"  to  his  heart. 

I  heard  only  the  friendhest  criticism  of  the 
Russians. 

It  is  a  rather  delicate  task  to  say  what  the 
French  think  of  the  Americans,  for  the  real  truth 
is  that  they  think  of  us  but  rarely.  Our  quarrel 
with  Germany  over  the  submarines  interested 
them  somewhat,  but  this  interest  rapidly  died 
away  when  it  became  evident  that  we  were  not 
going  to  do  anything  about  it.  They  see  our  flag 
over  countless  charity  depots,  hospitals,  and 
benevolent  institutions,  and  are  grateful.  The 
poilu  would  be  glad  to  see  us  in  the  fray  simply 
because  of  the  aid  we  should  bring,  but  he  is  rea- 
sonable enough  to  know  that  the  United  States 
can  keep  out  of  the  melee  without  losing  any 
moral  prestige.  The  only  hostile  criticism  of 
America  that  I  heard  came  from  doctrinaires  who 
saw  the  war  as  a  conflict  between  autocracy  and 
democracy,  and  if  you  grant  that  this  point  of 
view  is  the  right  one,  these  thinkers  have  a  right 
to  despise  us.  But  the  Frenchman  knows  that  the 
Allies  represent  something  more  than  "virtue-on- 
a-rampage." 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

In  Lyons  I  saw  a  sight  at  once  ludicrous  and 
pathetic.  Two  Httle  dragoons  of  the  class  of  191 7, 
stripling  boys  of  eighteen  or  nineteen  at  the  most, 
walked  across  the  public  square;  their  uniforms 
were  too  large  for  them,  the  skirts  of  their  great 
blue  mantles  barely  hung  above  the  dust  of  the 
street,  and  their  enormous  warlike  helmets  and 
flowing  horse-tails  were  ill-suited  to  their  boyish 
heads.  As  I  looked  at  them,  I  thought  of  the  blue 
bundles  I  had  seen  drying  upon  the  barbed  wire, 
and  felt  sick  at  the  brutality  of  the  whole  awful 
business.  The  sun  was  shining  over  the  bluish 
mists  of  Lyons,  and  the  bell  of  old  Saint- Jean  was 
ringing.  Two  Zouaves,  stone  blind,  went  by 
guided  by  a  little,  fat  infirmier.  At  the  frontier, 
the  General  Staff  was  preparing  the  defense  of 
Verdun. 

One  great  nation,  for  the  sake  of  a  city  value- 
less from  a  military  point  of  view,  was  preparing 
to  kill  several  hundred  thousand  of  its  citizens, 
and  another  great  nation,  anxious  to  retain  the 
city,  was  preparing  calmly  for  a  parallel  hecatomb. 
There  is  something  awful  and  dreadful  about  the 
orderliness  of  a  great  offensive,  for  while  one's 
imagination  is  grasped  by  the  grandeur  and  the 
189 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

organization  of  the  thing,  all  one's  faculties  of 
intellect  are  revolted  by  the  stark  brutality  of 
death  en  masse. 

Early  in  February  we  were  called  to  Bar-le- 
Duc,  a  pleasant  old  city  some  distance  behind 
Verdun.  Several  hundred  thousand  men  were  soon 
going  to  be  killed  and  wounded,  and  the  city  was 
in  a  feverish  haste  of  preparation.  So  many  thou- 
sand cans  of  ether,  so  many  thousand  pounds  of 
lint,  so  many  million  shells,  so  many  ambulances, 
so  many  hundred  thousand  litres  of  gasoline. 
Nobody  knew  when  the  Germans  were  going  to 
strike. 

During  the  winter  great  activity  in  the  German 
trenches  near  Verdun  had  led  the  French  to  expect 
an  attack,  but  it  was  not  till  the  end  of  January 
that  aeroplane  reconnoitering  made  certain  the 
imminence  of  an  offensive.  As  a  first  step  in  count- 
ering it,  the  French  authorities  prepared  in  the 
villages  surrounding  Bar-le-Duc  a  number  of 
depots  for  troops,  army  supplies,  and  ammuni- 
tion. Of  this  organization,  Bar-le-Duc  was  the 
key.  The  preparations  for  the  counter-attack 
were  there  centralized.  Day  after  day  convoys  of 
motor-lorries  carrying  troops  ground  into  town 
and  disappeared  to  the  eastward;  big  mortars 
190 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

mounted  on  trucks  came  rattling  over  the  pave- 
ments to  go  no  one  knew  where;  and  khaki-clad 
troops,  troupes  d^attaque,  tanned  Marocains  and 
chunky,  bull-necked  Zouaves,  crossed  the  bridge 
over  the  Ornain  and  marched  away.  At  the  turn 
in  the  road  a  new  transparency  had  been  erected, 
with  VERDUN  printed  on  it  in  huge  letters. 
Now  and  then  a  soldier,  catching  sight  of  it, 
would  nudge  his  comrade. 

On  the  1 8  th  we  were  told  to  be  in  readiness  to 
go  at  any  minute  and  permissions  to  leave  the 
barrack  yard  were  recalled. 

The  attack  began  with  an  air  raid  on  Bar-le- 
Duc.  I  was  working  on  my  engine  in  the  sunlit 
barrack  yard  when  I  heard  a  mufHed  Pom  I  some- 
where to  the  right.  Two  French  drivers  who  were 
putting  a  tire  on  their  car  jumped  up  with  a 
"Qu'est-ce  que  c'est  que  fa?"  We  stood  together 
looking  round.  Beyond  a  wall  on  the  other  side 
of  the  river  great  volumes  of  brownish  smoke  were 
rolling  up,  and  high  in  the  air,  brown  and  silvery, 
like  great  locusts,  were  two  German  aeroplanes. 

"Nom  d'un  chien,  il  y'en  a  plusieurs,"  said  one 
of  the  Frenchmen,  pointing  out  four,  five,  seven, 
nine  aeroplanes.  One  seemed  to  hang  immobile 
over  the  barrack  yard.  I  fancy  we  all  had  visions 

191 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

of  what  would  happen  if  a  bomb  hit  the  near-by 
gasoline  reserve.  Men  ran  across  the  yard  to  the 
shelter  of  the  dormitories ;  some,  caught  as  we  were 
in  the  open,  preferred  to  take  a  chance  on  drop- 
ping flat  under  a  car.  A  whistling  scream,  a  kind 
of  shrill,  increasing  shriek,  sounded  in  the  air  and 
ended  in  a  crash.  Smoke  rolled  up  heavily  in  an- 
other direction.  Another  whistle,  another  crash, 
another  and  another  and  another.  The  last  build- 
ing struck  shot  up  great  tongues  of  flame.  "C'est 
la  gare,"  said  somebody.  Across  the  yard  a  com- 
rade's arm  beckoned  me,  "  Come  on,  we  've  got 
to  help  put  out  the  fires!" 

The  streets  were  quite  deserted;  horses  and 
wagons  abandoned  to  their  fate  were,  however, 
quietly  holding  their  places.  Faces,  emotionally 
divided  between  fear  and  strong  interest,  peered 
at  us  as  we  ran  by,  disappearing  at  the  first 
whistle  of  a  bomb,  for  all  the  world  like  hermit- 
crabs  into  their  shells.  A  whistle  sent  us  both 
scurrying  into  a  passageway;  the  shell  fell  with  a 
wicked  hiss,  and,  scattering  the  paving-stones  to 
the  four  winds,  blew  a  shallow  crater  in  the  road- 
way. A  big  cart  horse,  hit  in  the  neck  and  forelegs 
by  fragments  of  the  shell,  screamed  hideously. 
Right  at  the  bridge,  the  sentry,  an  old  territorial, 
192 


Preparing  the  Defense  of  Verdun 

was  watching  the  whole  scene  from  his  flimsy  box 
with  every  appearance  of  unconcern. 

Not  the  station  itself,  but  a  kind  of  baggage- 
shed  was  on  fire.  A  hose  fed  by  an  old-fashioned 
seesaw  pump  was  being  played  on  the  flames. 
Officials  of  the  railroad  company  ran  to  and  fro 
shouting  unintelligible  orders.  For  five  minutes 
more  the  German  aeroplanes  hovered  overhead, 
then  slowly  melted  away  into  the  sky  to  the  south- 
east. The  raid  had  lasted,  I  imagine,  just  about 
twenty  minutes. 

That  night,  fearing  another  raid,  all  lights  were 
extinguished  in  the  town  and  at  the  barracks. 
Before  rolling  up  in  my  blankets,  I  went  out  into 
the  yard  to  get  a  few  breaths  of  fresh  air.  Through 
the  night  air,  rising  and  falling  with  the  wind,  I 
heard  in  one  of  the  random  silences  of  the  night 
a  low,  distant  drumming  of  artillery. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  GREAT  DAYS  OF  VERDUN 

I 

The  Verdun  I  saw  in  April,  1913,  was  an  out-of- 
the-way  provincial  city  of  little  importance  out- 
side of  its  situation  as  the  nucleus  of  a  great  fort- 
ress. There  were  two  cities  —  an  old  one,  la  ville 
des  eveques,  on  a  kind  of  acropolis  rising  from  the 
left  bank  of  the  Meuse,  and  a  newer  one  built  on 
the  meadows  of  the  river.  Round  the  acropolis 
Vauban  had  built  a  citadel  whose  steep,  green- 
black  walls  struck  root  in  the  mean  streets  and 
narrow  lanes  on  the  slopes.  Sunless  by-ways,  ill- 
paved  and  sour  with  the  odor  of  surface  drainage, 
led  to  it.  Always  picturesque,  the  old  town  now 
and  then  took  on  a  real  beauty.  There  were  fine, 
shield-bearing  doorways  of  the  Renaissance  to  be 
seen,  Gothic  windows  in  greasy  walls,  and  here 
and  there  at  a  street  corner  a  huddle  of  half- 
timbered  houses  in  a  high  contrast  of  invading 
sunlight  and  retreating  shade.  From  the  cathedral 
parapet,  there  was  a  view  of  the  distant  forts,  and 
a  horizontal  sweep  of  the  unharvested,  buff-brown 
moorlands. 

194 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

"Un  peu  morte,"  say  the  French  who  knew 
Verdun  before  the  war.  The  new  town  was  with- 
out distinction.  It  was  out  of  date.  It  had  none  of 
the  glories  that  the  province  copies  from  Paris,  no 
boulevards,  no  grandes  aerteres.  Such  life  as  there 
was,  was  military.  Rue  Mazel  was  bright  with 
the  gold  braid  and  scarlet  of  the  fournisseurs  mili- 
taires,  and  in  the  late  afternoon  chic  young  officers 
enlivened  the  provincial  dinginess  with  a  brave 
show  of  handsome  uniforms.  All  day  long  squads 
of  soldiers  v^ent  flick!  flack!  up  and  down  the  street 
and  bugle-calls  sounded  piercingly  from  the  cita- 
del. The  soldiery  submerged  the  civil  population. 

With  no  industries  of  any  importance,  and  be- 
coming less  and  less  of  an  economic  center  as  the 
depopulation  of  the  Woevre  continued,  Verdun 
lived  for  its  garrison.  A  fortress  since  Roman 
days,  the  city  could  not  escape  its  historic  des- 
tiny. Remembering  the  citadel,  the  buttressed 
cathedral,  the  soldiery,  and  the  military  tradition, 
the  visitor  felt  himself  to  be  in  a  soldier's  country 
strong  with  the  memory  of  many  wars. 

n 

The  next  day,  at  noon,  we  were  ordered  to  go  to 
M ,  and  at  12.15  we  were  in  convoy  formation 

19s 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

in  the  road  by  the  barracks  wall.  The  great  rcmte 
nationale  from  Bar-le-Duc  to  Verdun  runs  through 
a  rolling,  buff-brown  moorland,  poor  in  villages  and 
arid  and  desolate  in  aspect.  Now  it  sinks  through 
moorland  valleys,  now  it  cuts  bowl-shaped  depres- 
sions in  which  the  spring  rains  have  bred  green 
quagmires,  and  now,  rising,  leaps  the  crest  of  a  hill 
commanding  a  landscape  of  ocean-like  immensity. 

Gray  segments  of  the  road  disappear  ahead  be- 
hind fuzzy  monticules;  a  cloud  of  wood-smoke 
hangs  low  over  some  invisible  village  in  a  fold  of 
the  moor,  and  patches  of  woodland  lie  like  mantles 
on  the  barren  slopes.  Great  swathes  of  barbed 
wire,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  width,  advancing  and 
retreating,  rising  and  falling  with  the  geographical 
nature  of  the  defensive  position,  disappear  on  both 
sides  to  the  horizon.  And  so  thick  is  this  wire 
spread,  that  after  a  certain  distance  the  eye  fails 
to  distinguish  the  individual  threads  and  sees  only 
rows  of  stout  black  posts  filled  with  a  steely, 
purple  mist. 

We  went  though  several  villages,  being  greeted 
in  every  one  with  the  inevitable  error,  Anglais! 
We  dodged  interminable  motor-convoys  carrying 
troops,  the  poilus  sitting  unconcernedly  along  the 
benches  at  the  side,  their  rifles  tight  between  their 
196 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

knees.    At  midnight  we  arrived  at  B ,  four 

miles  and  a  half  west  of  Verdun.  The  night  was 
clear  and  bitter  cold;  the  ice-blue  winter  stars  were 
westering.  Refugees  tramped  past  in  the  dark- 
ness. By  the  sputtering  light  of  a  match,  I  saw  a 
woman  go  by  with  a  cat  in  a  canary  cage;  the 
animal  moved  uneasily,  its  eyes  shone  with  fear. 
A  middle-aged  soldier  went  by  accompanying  an 
old  woman  and  a  young  girl.  Many  pushed  baby 
carriages  ahead  of  them  full  of  knick-knacks  and 
packages. 

The  crossroad  where  the  ambulances  turned  off 
was  a  maze  of  beams  of  light  from  the  autos. 
There  was  shouting  of  orders  which  nobody  could 
carry  out.  Wounded,  able  to  walk,  passed  through 
the  beams  of  the  lamps,  the  red  of  their  blood- 
stains, detached  against  the  white  of  the  band- 
ages, presenting  the  sharpest  of  contrasts  in  the 
silvery  glare.  At  the  station,  men  who  had  died  in 
the  ambulances  were  dumped  hurriedly  in  a  plot 
of  grass  by  the  side  of  the  roadway  and  covered 
with  a  blanket.  Never  was  there  seen  such  a 
bedlam!  But  on  the  main  road  the  great  convoys 
moved  smoothly  on  as  if  held  together  by  an  in- 
visible chain.  A  smouldering  in  the  sky  told  of 
fires  in  Verdun. 

197 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

From  a  high  hill  between  B and  Verdun 

I  got  my  first  good  look  at  the  bombardment. 
From  the  edge  of  earth  and  sky,  far  across  the 
moorlands,  ray  after  ray  of  violet-white  fire  made 
a  swift  stab  at  the  stars.  Mingled  with  the  rays, 
now  seen  here,  now  there,  the  reddish-violet  semi- 
circle of  the  great  mortars  flared  for  the  briefest 
instant  above  the  horizon.  From  the  direction  of 
this  inferno  came  a  loud  roaring,  a  rumbling  and 
roaring,  increasing  in  volume  —  the  sound  of  a 
great  river  tossing  huge  rocks  through  subterra- 
nean abysses.  Every  Uttle  while  a  great  shell,  fall- 
ing in  the  city,  would  blow  a  great  hole  of  white 
in  the  night,  and  so  thundering  was  the  crash  of 
arrival  that  we  almost  expected  to  see  the  city 
sink  into  the  earth. 

Terrible  in  the  desolation  of  the  night,  on  fire, 
haunted  by  specters  of  wounded  men  who  crept 
along  the  narrow  lanes  by  the  city  walls,  Verdun 
was  once  more  undergoing  the  destinies  of  war. 
The  shells  were  falling  along  rue  Mazel  and  on  the 
citadel.  A  group  of  old  houses  by  the  Meuse  had 
burnt  to  rafters  of  flickering  flame,  and  as  I  passed 
them,  one  collapsed  into  the  flooded  river  in  a 
cloud  of  hissing  steam. 

In  order  to  escape  shells,  the  wounded  were 
198 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

taking  the  obscure  by-ways  of  the  town.  Our 
wounded  had  started  to  walk  to  the  ambulance 
station  with  the  others,  but,  being  weak  and  ex- 
hausted, had  collapsed  on  the  way.  They  were 
waiting  for  us  at  a  little  house  just  beyond  the 
walls.  Said  one  to  the  other,  "  As-tu-vu  Maurice?  " 
and  the  other  answered  without  any  emotion, 
"Ilest  mort." 

The  24th  was  the  most  dreadful  day.  The  wind 
and  snow  swept  the  heights  of  the  desolate  moor, 
seriously  interfering  with  the  running  of  the  auto- 
mobiles. Here  and  there,  on  a  slope,  a  lorry  was 
stuck  in  the  slush,  though  the  soldier  passengers 
were  out  of  it  and  doing  their  best  to  push  it 
along.  The  cannonade  was  still  so  intense  that, 
in  intervals  between  the  heavier  snow-flurries,  I 
could  see  the  stabs  of  fire  in  the  brownish  sky. 
Wrapped  in  sheepskins  and  muffled  to  the  ears  in 
knitted  scarves  that  might  have  come  from  New 
England,  the  territorials  who  had  charge  of  the 
road  were  filling  the  ruts  with  crushed  rock.  Ex- 
haustion had  begun  to  tell  on  the  horses;  many 
lay  dead  and  snowy  in  the  frozen  fields.  A  detach- 
ment of  khaki-clad,  red-fezzed  colonial  troops 
passed  by,  bent  to  the  storm.  The  news  was  of  the 
most  depressing  sort.  The  wounded  could  give 
199 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

you  only  the  story  of  their  part  of  the  line,  and 
you  heard  over  and  over  again,  "Nous  avons 
recules."  A  detachment  of  cavalry  was  at  hand; 
their  casques  and  dark-blue  mantles  gave  them  a 
crusading  air.  And  through  the  increasing  cold 
and  darkness  of  late  afternoon,  troops,  cannons, 
horsemen,  and  motor-trucks  vanished  toward  the 
edge  of  the  moor  where  flashed  with  increasing 
brilliance  the  rays  of  the  artillery. 

I  saw  some  German  prisoners  for  the  first  time 

at  T ,  below  Verdun.  They  had  been  marched 

down  from  the  firing-hne.  Young  men  in  the 
twenties  for  the  most  part,  they  seemed  even 
more  war-worn  than  the  French.  The  hideous, 
helot-like  uniform  of  the  German  private  hung 
loosely  on  their  shoulders,  and  the  color  of  their 
skin  was  unhealthy  and  greenish.  They  were  far 
from  appearing  starved;  I  noticed  two  or  three 
who  looked  particularly  sound  and  hearty.  Never- 
theless, they  were  by  no  means  as  sound-looking 
as  the  ruddier  French. 

The  poilus  crowded  round  to  see  them,  staring 
into  their  faces  without  the  least  malevolence.  At 
last  —  at  last  —  wild,  enfin  des  Bochesl  A  httle  to 
the  side  stood  a  strange  pair,  two  big  men  wearing 
an  odd  kind  of  grayish  protector  and  apron  over 

200 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

their  bodies.  Against  a  near-by  wall  stood  a  kind 
of  flattish  tank  to  which  a  long  metalHc  hose  was 
attached.  The  French  soldiers  eyed  them  with 
contempt  and  disgust.  I  caught  the  words, 
"  Flame-throwers ! ' ' 

I  do  not  know  what  we  should  have  done  at 
Verdun  without  Lieutenant  Roeder,  our  mechani- 
cal ofl&cer.  All  the  boys  behaved  splendidly,  but 
Lieutenant  Roeder  had  the  tremendously  difficult 
task  of  keeping  the  Section  going  when  the  rolling- 
stock  was  none  too  good,  and  fearful  weather  and 
too  constant  usage  had  reduced  some  of  the 
wagons  to  wrecks.  It  was  all  the  finer  of  him  be- 
cause he  was  by  profession  a  bacteriologist.  Still 
very  young,  he  had  done  distinguished  work. 
Simply  because  there  was  no  one  else  to  attend  to 
the  mechanical  department,  he  had  volunteered 
for  this  most  tiresome  and  disagreeable  task. 
There  is  not  a  single  driver  in  Section  II  who 
does  not  owe  much  to  the  friendly  counsel,  splen- 
did courage,  and  keen  mind  of  George  Roeder. 

m 

A  few  miles  below  Verdun,  on  a  narrow  strip  of 
meadowland  between  the  river  and  the  northern 
blu£fs,  stood  an  eighteenth-century  chateau  and 

201 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  half-dozen  houses  of  its  dependents.  The 
hurrying  river  had  flooded  the  low  fields  and  then 
retreated,  turning  the  meadows  and  pasturages  to 
bright  green,  puddly  marshes,  malodorous  with 
swampy  exhalations.  Beyond  the  swirls  and  cur- 
rents of  the  river  and  its  vanishing  islands  of  pale- 
green  pebbles,  rose  the  brown,  deserted  hills  of  the 
Hants  de  Meuse.  The  top  of  one  height  had  been 
pinched  into  the  rectangle  of  a  fortress;  little 
forests  ran  along  the  sky-Hne  of  the  heights,  and  a 
narrow  road,  slanting  across  a  spur  of  the  valley, 
climbed  and  disappeared. 

The  chateau  itself  was  a  huge,  three-story  box 
of  gray-white  stone  with  a  slate  roof,  a  little  tur- 
ret en  poivrUre  at  each  corner,  and  a  graceless 
classic  doorway  in  the  principal  fa  jade.  A  wide 
double  gate,  with  a  coronet  in  a  tarnished  gold 
medallion  set  in  the  iron  arch-piece,  gave  entrance 
to  this  place  through  a  kind  of  courtyard  formed 
by  the  rear  of  the  chateau  and  the  walls  of  two 
low  wings  devoted  to  the  stables  and  the  servants' 
quarters.  Within,  a  high  clump  of  dark-green  myr- 
tle, ringed  with  muddy,  rut-scarred  turf,  marked 
the  theoretical  limits  of  a  driveway.  Along  the 
right-hand  wall  stood  the  rifles  of  the  wounded, 
and  in  a  corner,  a  great  snarled  pile  of  bayonets, 

202 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

belts,  cartridge-boxes,  gas-mask  satchels,  greasy 
tin  boxes  of  anti-lice  ointment,  and  dented  hel- 
mets. A  bright  winter  sunlight  fell  on  walls  dank 
from  the  river  mists,  and  heightened  the  austerity 
of  the  landscape.  Beyond  a  bend  in  the  river  lay 
the  smoke  of  the  battle  of  Douaumont ;  shells  broke, 
pin-points  of  light,  in  the  upper  fringes  of  the  haze. 

The  chateau  had  been  a  hospital  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war.  A  heavy  smell  of  ether  and 
iodoform  lay  about  it,  mixed  with  the  smell  of  the 
war.  This  eflSuvia  of  an  army,  mixed  with  the 
sharper  reek  of  anaesthetics,  was  the  atmosphere 
of  the  hospital.  The  great  rush  of  wounded 
had  begun.  Every  few  minutes  the  ambulances 
slopped  down  a  miry  b3rway,  and  turned  in  the 
gates;  tired,  putty-faced  hospital  attendants  took 
out  the  stretchers  and  the  nouveaux  clients;  mussy 
bundles  of  blue  rags  and  bloody  blankets  turned 
into  human  beings;  an  overworked,  nervous 
medecin  chef  shouted  contradictory  orders  at  the 
brancardiers,  and  passed  into  real  crises  of  hysteri- 
cal rage. 

"  Avancez! "  he  would  scream  at  the  bewildered 
chauffeurs  of  the  ambulances;  and  an  instant 
later,  "Reculez!  Reculez!" 

The  wounded  in  the  stretchers,  strewn  along 
203 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

the  edges  of  the  driveway,  raised  patient,  tired 
eyes  at  his  snarling. 

Another  doctor,  a  little  bearded  man  wearing  a 
white  apron  and  the  red  velvet  kepi  of  an  army 
physician,  questioned  each  batch  of  new  arrivals. 
Deep  lines  of  fatigue  had  traced  themselves  under 
his  kindly  eyes;  his  thin  face  had  a  dreadful  color. 
Some  of  the  wounded  had  turned  their  eyes  from 
the  sun;  others,  too  weak  to  move,  lay  stonily 
blinking.  Almost  expressionless,  silent,  they  re- 
signed themselves  to  the  attendants  as  if  these  men 
were  the  deaf  ministers  of  some  inexorable  power. 

The  surgeon  went  from  stretcher  to  stretcher 
looking  at  the  diagnosis  cards  attached  at  the 
poste  de  secours,  stopping  occasionally  to  ask  the 
fatal  question,  "As-tu  crache  du  sang?"  (Have 
you  spit  blood?)  A  thin  oldish  man  with  a  face  full 
of  hollows  like  that  of  an  old  horse,  answered 
"Oui,"  faintly.  Close  by,  an  artilleryman,  whose 
cannon  had  burst,  looked  with  calm  brown  eyes 
out  of  a  cooked  and  bluish  face.  Another,  with  a 
soldier's  tunic  thrown  capewise  over  his  naked 
torso,  trembled  in  his  thin  blanket,  and  from  the 
edges  of  a  cotton  and  lint-pad  dressing  hastily 
stuffed  upon  a  shoulder  wound,  an  occasional  drop 
of  blood  slid  down  his  lean  chest. 
204 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

A  little  to  one  side,  the  cooks  of  the  hospital,  in 
their  greasy  aprons,  watched  the  performance 
with  a  certain  calm  interest.  In  a  few  minutes  the 
wounded  were  sorted  and  sent  to  the  various 
wards.  I  was  ordered  to  take  three  men  who  had 
been  successfully  operated  on  to  the  barracks  for 
convalescents  several  miles  away. 

A  highway  and  an  unused  railroad,  both  under 
heavy  fire  from  German  guns  on  the  Hauts  de 
Meuse,  passed  behind  the  chateau  and  along  the 
foot  of  the  bluffs.  There  were  a  hundred  shell 
holes  in  the  marshes  between  the  road  and  the 
river,  black-lipped  craters  in  the  sedgy  green; 
there  were  ugly  punches  in  the  brown  earth  of  the 
bluffs,  and  deep  scoops  in  the  surface  of  the  road. 
The  telephone  wires,  cut  by  shell  fragments,  fell  in 
stiff,  draping  lines  to  the  ground.  Every  once  in  a 
while  a  shell  would  fall  into  the  river,  causing  a 
silvery  gray  geyser  to  hang  for  an  instant  above 
the  green  eddies  of  the  Meuse.  A  certain  village 
along  this  highway  was  the  focal  point  of  the  fir- 
ing. Many  of  the  houses  had  been  blown  to 
pieces,  and  fragments  of  red  tile,  bits  of  shiny 
glass,  and  lumps  of  masonry  were  strewn  all  over 
the  deserted  street. 

As  I  hurried  along,  two  shells  came  over,  one 
205 


A  Volujiteer  Poilu 

sliding  into  the  river  with  a  Hip !  and  the  other 
landing  in  a  house  about  two  hundred  yards  away. 
A  vast  cloud  of  grayish-black  smoke  befogged  the 
cottage,  and  a  section  of  splintered  timber  came 
buzzing  through  the  air  and  fell  into  a  puddle. 
From  the  house  next  to  the  one  struck,  a  black 
cat  came  slinking,  paused  for  an  indecisive  second 
in  the  middle  of  the  street,  and  ran  back  again. 
Through  the  canvas  partition  of  the  ambulance,  I 
heard  the  voices  of  my  convalescents.  "No  more 
marmites!"  I  cried  to  them  as  I  swung  down  a 
road  out  of  shell  reach.  I  little  knew  what  was 
waiting  for  us  beyond  the  next  village. 

A  regiment  of  Zouaves  going  up  to  the  line  was 
resting  at  the  crossroad,  and  the  regimental 
wagons,  drawn  up  in  waiting  line,  blocked  the 
narrow  road  completely.  At  the  angle  between 
the  two  highways,  under  the  four  trees  planted  by 
pious  custom  of  the  Meuse,  stood  a  cross  of  thick 
planks.  From  each  arm  of  the  cross,  on  wine- 
soaked  straps,  dangled,  like  a  bunch  of  grapes,  a 
cluster  of  dark-blue  canteens;  rifles  were  stacked 
round  its  base,  and  under  the  trees  stood  half  a 
dozen  clipped-headed,  bull-necked  Zouaves.  A 
rather  rough-looking  adjutant,  with  a  bullet  head 
disfigured  by  a  frightful  scar  at  the  corner  of  his 
206 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

mouth,  rode  up  and  down  the  line  to  see  if  all  was 
well.  Little  groups  were  handing  round  a  half  loaf 
of  army  bread,  and  washing  it  down  with  gulps  of 
wine. 

"Hello,  sport!"  they  cried  at  me;  and  the  fa- 
yorite  "All  right,"  and  "Tommy!" 

The  air  was  heavy  with  the  musty  smell  of 
street  mud  that  never  dries  during  winter  time, 
mixed  with  the  odor  of  the  tired  horses,  who 
stood,  scarcely  moving,  backed  away  from  their 
harnesses  against  the  mire-gripped  wagons.  Sud- 
denly the  order  to  go  on  again  was  given;  the 
carters  snapped  their  whips,  the  horses  pulled, 
the  noisy,  lumbering,  creaky  line  moved  on,  and 
the  men  fell  in  behind,  in  any  order. 

I  started  my  car  again  and  looked  for  an  open- 
ing through  the  melee. 

Beyond  the  cross,  the  road  narrowed  and 
flanked  one  of  the  southeastern  forts  of  the  city. 
A  meadow,  which  sloped  gently  upward  from 
the  road  to  the  abrupt  hillside  of  the  fortress, 
had  been  used  as  a  place  of  encampment  and  had 
been  trodden  into  a  surface  of  thick  cheesy  mire. 
Here  and  there  were  the  ashes  of  fires.  There 
were  hundreds  of  such  places  round  the  moorland 
villages  between  Verdun  and  Bar-le-Duc.  The 
207 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

fort  looked  squarely  down  on  Verdun,  and  over 
its  grassy  height  came  the  drumming  of  the  bat- 
tle, and  the  frequent  crash  of  big  shells  falling 
into  the  city. 

In  a  corner  lay  the  anatomical  relics  of  some 
horses  killed  by  an  air-bomb  the  day  before.  And 
even  as  I  noted  them,  I  heard  the  muffled  Pom  I 
Pom  t  Pom  !  of  anti-aircraft  guns.  My  back  was 
to  the  river  and  I  could  not  see  what  was  going 
on. 

"What  is  it?"  I  said  to  a  Zouave  who  was 
plodding  along  beside  the  ambulance. 

"Des  Boches  —  crossing  the  river." 

The  regiment  plodded  on  as  before.  Now  and 
then  a  soldier  would  stop  and  look  up  at  the  aero- 
planes. 

"He's  coming!"  I  heard  a  voice  exclaim. 

Suddenly,  the  adjutant  whom  I  had  seen  be- 
fore came  galloping  down  the  line,  shouting, 
"Arretez!  Arretez!  Pas  de  mouvement!" 

A  current  of  tension  ran  down  the  troop  with 
as  much  reality  as  a  current  of  water  runs  down 
hill.  I  wondered  whether  the  Boche  had  seen  us. 

"Is  he  approaching?"  I  asked. 

"Yes." 

Ahead  of  me  was  a  one-horse  wagon,  and  ahead 
208 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

of  that  a  wagon  with  two  horses  carrying  the 
medical  supplies.  The  driver  of  the  latter,  an 
oldish,  thick-set,  wine-faced  fellow,  got  down  an 
instant  from  his  wagon,  looked  at  the  Boche,  and 
resumed  his  seat.  A  few  seconds  later,  there 
sounded  the  terrifying  scream  of  an  air-bomb, 
a  roar,  and  I  found  myself  in  a  bitter  swirl  of 
smoke.  The  shell  had  fallen  right  between  the 
horses  of  the  two-horse  wagon,  blowing  the  ani- 
mals to  pieces,  splintering  the  wagon,  and  killing 
the  driver.  Something  sailed  swiftly  over  my 
head,  and  landed  just  behind  the  ambulance. 
It  was  a  chunk  of  the  skull  of  one  of  the  horses. 
The  horse  attached  to  the  wagon  ahead  of  me 
went  into  a  frenzy  of  fear  and  backed  his  wagon 
into  my  ambulance,  smashing  the  right  lamp. 
In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  soldiers  dispersed. 
Some  ran  into  the  fields.  Others  crouched  in  the 
wayside  ditch.  A  cart  upset.  Another  bomb 
dropped  screaming  in  a  field  and  burst;  a  cloud 
of  smoke  rolled  away  down  the  meadow. 

When  the  excitement  had  subsided,  it  was 
found  that  a  soldier  had  been  wounded.  The  bod- 
ies of  the  horses  were  rolled  over  into  the  ditch, 
the  wreck  of  the  wagon  was  dragged  to  the  miry 
field,  and  the  regiment  went  on.  In  a  very  short 
209 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

time  I  got  to  the  hospital  and  delivered  my  con- 
valescents. 

My  way  home  ran  through  the  town  of  S , 

an  ugly,  overgrown  village  of  the  Verdunois,  given 
up  to  the  activities  of  the  staff  directing  the  battle. 
The  headquarters  building  was  the  hdtel  de  ville, 
a  large  eighteenth-century  edifice,  in  an  acre  of 
trampled  mud  a  little  distance  from  the  street. 
Before  the  building  flowed  the  great  highway 
from  Bar-le-Duc  to  Verdun;  relays  of  motor  lor- 
ries went  by,  and  gendarmes,  organized  into  a 
kind  of  traffic  squad,  stood  every  hundred  feet  or 

so.  The  atmosphere  of  S at  the  height  of  the 

battle  was  one  of  calm  organization;  it  would  not 
have  been  hard  to  believe  that  the  motor-lorries 
and  unemotional  men  were  at  the  service  of  some 
great  master-work  of  engineering.  There  was 
something  of  the  holiday  in  the  attitude  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  place;  they  watched  the  motor 
show  exactly  as  they  might  have  watched  a  circus 
parade. 

"Les  voila,"  said  somebody. 

A  little  bemedaled  group  appeared  on  the  steps 
of  the  h6tel  de  ville.  Dominating  it  was  Joffre. 
Above  middle  height,  silver-haired,  elderly,  he 
has  a  certain  paternal  look  which  his  eye  belies; 

2IO 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

Joffre's  eye  is  the  hard  eye  of  a  commander-in- 
chief,  the  mihtary  eye,  the  eye  of  an  Old  Testa- 
ment father  if  you  will.  De  Castelnau  was  speak- 
ing, making  no  gestures  —  an  old  man  with  an 
ashen  skin,  deep-set  eye  and  great  hooked  nose,  a 
long  cape  concealed  the  thick,  age-settled  body. 
Poincare  stood  Hstening,  with  a  look  at  once  wor- 
ried and  brave,  the  ghost  of  a  sad  smile  lingering 
on  a  sensitive  mouth.  Last  of  all  came  Petain,  the 
protege  of  De  Castelnau,  who  commanded  at 
Verdun  —  a  tall,  square-built  man,  not  un-Eng- 
lish in  his  appearance,  with  grizzled  hair  and  the 
sober  face  of  a  thinker.  But  his  mouth  and  jaw 
are  those  of  a  man  of  action,  and  the  look  in  his 
gray  eyes  is  always  changing.  Now  it  is  specula- 
tive and  analytic,  now  steely  and  cold. 

In  the  shelter  of  a  doorway  stood  a  group  of 
territorials,  getting  their  first  real  news  of  the 
battle  from  a  Paris  newspaper.  I  heard  "Nous 
avons  recule  —  huit  kilometres  —  le  general 
Petain  —  "A  motor-lorry  drowned  out  the  rest. 

That  night  we  were  given  orders  to  be  ready  to 
evacuate  the  chateau  in  case  the  Boches  advanced. 
The  drivers  slept  in  the  ambulances,  rising  at  in- 
tervals through  the  night  to  warm  their  engines. 
The  buzz  of  the  motors  sounded  through  the  tall 

2IZ 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

pines  of  the  chateau  park,  drowning  out  the  rum- 
bling of  the  bombardment  and  the  monotonous 
roaring  of  the  flood.  Now  and  then  a  trench  Ught, 
rising  hke  a  spectral  star  over  the  lines  on  the 
Hants  de  Meuse,  would  shine  reflected  in  the 
river.  At  intervals  attendants  carried  down  the 
swampy  paths  to  the  chapel  the  bodies  of  soldiers 
who  had  died  during  the  night.  The  cannon  flash- 
ing was  terrific.  Just  before  dawn,  half  a  dozen 
batteries  of  "seventy-fives"  came  in  a  swift  trot 
down  the  shelled  road;  the  men  leaned  over  on 
their  steaming  horses,  the  harnesses  rattled  and 
jingled,  and  the  cavalcade  swept  on,  outlined  a 
splendid  instant  against  the  mortar  flashes  and 
the  streaks  of  day. 

On  my  morning  trip  a  soldier  with  bandaged 
arm  was  put  beside  me  on  the  front  seat.  He  was 
about  forty  years  old;  a  wiry  black  beard  gave  a 
certain  fullness  to  his  thin  face,  and  his  hands  were 
pudgy  and  short  of  finger.  When  he  removed  his 
helmet,  I  saw  that  he  was  bald.  A  bad  cold  caused 
him  to  speak  in  a  curious  whispering  tone,  giving 
to  everything  he  said  the  character  of  a  gro- 
tesque confidence. 

"What  do  you  do  en  civil?"  he  asked. 

I  told  him. 

212 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

"I  am  a  pastry  cook,"  he  went  on;  "my  spe- 
cialty is  Saint-Denis  apple  tarts." 

A  marmite  intended  for  the  road  landed  in  the 
river  as  he  spoke. 

"Have  you  ever  had  one?  They  are  very  good 
when  made  with  fresh  cream."  He  sighed. 

"How  did  you  get  wounded?"  said  I. 

"ficlat  d'obus,"  he  replied,  as  if  that  were  the 
whole  story.  After  a  pause  he  added,  "  Douau- 
mont  —  yesterday." 

I  thought  of  the  shells  I  had  seen  bursting  over 
the  fort. 

"Do  you  put  salt  in  chocolate?"  he  asked  pro- 
fessionally. 

"Not  as  a  rule,"  I  replied. 

"It  improves  it,"  he  pursued,  as  if  he  were  re- 
vealing a  confidential  dogma.  "The  Boche  bread 
is  bad,  very  bad,  much  worse  than  a  year  ago. 
Full  of  crumbles  and  lumps.  Degoutant!" 

The  ambulance  rolled  up  to  the  evacuation 
station,  and  my  pastry  cook  alighted. 

"When  the  war  is  over,  come  to  my  shop,"  he 
whispered  benevolently,  "and  you  shall  have 
some  tartes  aux  pommes  a  la  mode  de  Saint- 
Denis  with  my  wife  and  me." 

"With  fresh  cream?"  I  asked. 
213 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

"Of  course,"  he  replied  seriously. 

I  accepted  gratefully,  and  the  good  old  soul 
gave  me  his  address. 

In  the  afternoon  a  sergeant  rode  with  me.  He 
was  somewhere  between  twenty-eight  and  thirty, 
thick-set  of  body,  with  black  hair  and  the  tanned 
and  ruddy  complexion  of  outdoor  folk.  The  high 
collar  of  a  dark-blue  sweater  rose  over  his  great 
coat  and  circled  a  muscular  throat;  his  gray  socks 
were  pulled  country-wise  outside  of  the  legs  of 
his  blue  trousers.  He  had  an  honest,  pleasant 
face;  there  was  a  certain  simple,  wholesome  qual- 
ity about  the  man.  In  the  piping  times  of  peace, 
he  was  a  cuUivateur  in  the  Valois,  working  his  own 
little  farm;  he  was  married  and  h'ad  two  httle 
boys.  At  Douaumont,  a  fragment  of  a  shell  had 
torn  open  his  left  hand. 

"The  Boches  are  not  going  to  get  through  up 
there?" 

"Not  now.  As  long  as  we  hold  the  heights, 
Verdun  is  safe."  His  simple  French,  innocent  of 
argot,  had  a  good  country  twang.  "But  oh,  the 
people  killed!  Comme  il  y  a  des  gens  tues!"  He 
pronounced  the  final  s  of  the  word  gens  in  the 
manner  of  the  Valois. 

"^a  s'accroche  aux  arbres,"  he  continued. 
214 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

The  vagueness  of  the  qa  had  a  dreadful  quality 
in  it  that  made  you  see  trees  and  mangled  bodies. 
"We  had  to  hold  the  crest  of  Douaumont  under 
a  terrible  fire,  and  clear  the  craters  on  the  slope 
when  the  Germans  tried  to  fortify  them.  Our 
'seventy-fives'  dropped  shells  into  the  big  cra- 
ters as  I  would  drop  stones  into  a  pond.  Pauvres 
gens!" 

The  phrase  had  an  earth-wide  sympathy  in  it, 
a  feeling  that  the  translation  "poor  folks"  does 
not  render.  He  had  taken  part  in  a  strange  inci- 
dent. There  had  been  a  terrible  corps-a-corps  in 
one  of  the  craters  which  had  culminated  in  a  vic- 
tory for  the  French;  but  the  lieutenant  of  his 
company  had  left  a  kinsman  behind  with  the 
dead  and  wounded.  Two  nights  later,  the  officer 
and  the  sergeant  crawled  down  the  dreadful 
slope  to  the  crater  where  the  combat  had  taken 
place,  in  the  hope  of  finding  the  wounded  man. 
They  could  hear  faint  cries  and  moans  from  the 
crater  before  they  got  to  it.  The  light  of  a  pocket 
flash-lamp  showed  them  a  mass  of  dead  and 
wounded  on  the  floor  of  the  crater  —  "un  tas 
de  mourants  et  de  cadavres,"  as  he  expressed  it. 

After  a  short  search,  they  found  the  man  for 
whom  they  were  looking;  he  was  still  alive  but 

215 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

unconscious.  They  were  dragging  him  out  when 
a  German,  hideously  wounded,  begged  them  to 
kill  him. 

"Moi,  je  n'ai  plus  jambes,"  he  repeated  in 
French;  "pitie,  tuez-moi." 

He  managed  to  make  the  lieutenant  see  that 
if  he  went  away  and  left  them,  they  would  all 
die  in  the  agonies  of  thirst  and  open  wounds.  A 
little  flickering  life  still  lingered  in  a  few;  there 
were  vague  rdles  in  the  darkness.  A  rafale  of  shells 
fell  on  the  slope;  the  violet  glares  outlined  the 
mouth  of  the  crater. 

"Ferme  tes  yeux"  (shut  your  eyes),  said  the 
lieutenant  to  the  German.  The  Frenchmen 
scrambled  over  the  edge  of  the  crater  with  their 
unconscious  burden,  and  then,  from  a  little  dis- 
tance, threw  hand-grenades  into  the  pit  till  all 
the  moaning  died  away. 

Two  weeks  later,  when  the  back  of  the  attack 
had  been  broken  and  the  organization  of  the 
defense  had  developed  into  a  trusted  routine, 
I  went  again  to  Verdun.  The  snow  was  falling 
heavily,  covering  the  piles  of  debris  and  sifting 
into  the  black  skeletons  of  the  burned  houses. 
Untrodden  in  the  narrow  streets  lay  the  white 
216 


The  Great  Days  of  Verdun 

snow.  Above  the  Meuse,  above  the  ugly  burned 
areas  in  the  old  town  on  the  slope,  rose  the  shell- 
spattered  walls  of  the  citadel  and  the  cathedral 
towers  of  the  still,  tragic  town.  The  drumming 
of  the  bombardment  had  died  away.  The  river 
was  again  in  flood.  In  a  deserted  wine-shop  on 
a  side  street  well  protected  from  shells  by  a  wall 
of  sandbags  was  a  post  of  territorials. 

To  the  tragedy  of  Verdun,  these  men  were  the 
chorus;  there  was  something  Sophoclean  in  this 
group  of  older  men  alone  in  the  silence  and  ruin 
of  the  beleaguered  city.  A  stove  filled  with  wood 
from  the  wrecked  houses  gave  out  a  comfor- 
table heat,  and  in  an  alley-way,  under  cover, 
stood  a  two-wheeled  hose  cart,  and  an  old-fash- 
ioned seesaw  fire  pump.  There  were  old  clerks 
and  bookkeepers  among  the  soldier  firemen  — 
retired  gendarmes  who  had  volunteered,  a  coun- 
try schoolmaster,  and  a  shrewd  peasant  from 
the  Lyonnais.  Watch  was  kept  from  the  heights 
of  the  citadel,  and  the  outbreak  of  fire  in  any 
part  of  the  city  was  telephoned  to  the  shop.  On 
that  day  only  a  few  explosive  shells  had  fallen. 

"Do  you  want  to  see  something  odd,  mon 
vieux?"  said  one  of  the  pompiers  to  me;  and  he 
led  me  through  a  labyrinth  of  cellars  to  a  cold, 
217 


A  Volunteer  Poilu 

deserted  house.  The  snow  had  blown  through  the 
shell-spUntered  window-panes.  In  the  dining- 
room  stood  a  table,  the  cloth  was  laid  and  the 
silver  spread;  but  a  green  feathery  fungus  had 
grown  in  a  dish  of  food  and  broken  straws  of  dust 
floated  on  the  wine  in  the  glasses.  The  territorial 
took  my  arm,  his  eyes  showing  the  pleasure  of  my 
responding  curiosity,  and  whispered,  — 

"There  were  ofl5cers  quartered  here  who  were 
called  very  suddenly.  I  saw  the  servant  of  one  of 
them  yesterday;  they  have  all  been  killed." 

Outside  there  was  not  a  flash  from  the  batteries 
on  the  moor.  The  snow  continued  to  fall,  and 
darkness,  coming  on  the  swift  wings  of  the  storm, 
fell  like  a  mantle  over  the  desolation  of  the  city. 


THE  END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  .  S   .  A 


AN', 


4 


L  005  328  071   5 


